#this is about guatemalan elections/politics

[pirateofprose]

these next elections are plagued by the worst kind of corrupt, opportunist parasites posing as hot candidates that will finally help people i hope you all get into a building at the same time and it fucking explodes

[zvaigzdelasas]

Probably a pretty good sign about Arévalo that heritage foundation doesn't like him lmao

The results also do not bode well for America, as the current government has been pro-U.S. and a staunch American foreign policy ally, and the election of a leftist government could dramatically change all that.[...]

Arévalo hails from a new political party, Semilla. Local conservatives fear “he will make common cause with global progressives on abortion, gender identity, and a pro-LGBTQ+ platform.” Last year, Semilla unsuccessfully introduced a bill in parliament “for persons who menstruate,” a reference to “transgender” men’s rights [...]

The impact of Guatemala’s election on American national security could be severe. The current conservative government has been a staunch U.S. foreign policy ally, recognizing Taiwan over Communist China, openly backing Ukraine over Russia, and being solidly pro-Israel and pro-U.S. Other Latin American states have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative of receiving massive loans and infrastructure investments in return for loyalty to Beijing. Recently, current Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei pledged “absolute support” for Taiwan after neighboring Honduras switched sides and recognized Beijing over Taipei.[...]

[Arévalo] has made it clear that he wants to establish closer relations with China since he believes that it is essential for Guatemala’s economic growth. Palmieri said that Guatemala’s conservative values are aligned with conservative American principles: ��Guatemala is one of the U.S.’s last partners in the region that still holds conservative values such as support for a free-market economy, recognizing the hemispheric threat Communist China represents, and fidelity to the idea that the family structure is central to our lives.”

[mariacallous]

In mid-January, Phil Gordon visited Guatemala to hand deliver a letter from Kamala Harris to a man who very likely owed his presidency to U.S. diplomatic intervention.

Bernardo Arévalo de León had just been inaugurated as Guatemala’s new leader, despite efforts by the country’s outgoing government over months to derail a democratic transition of power. Gordon, the U.S. vice president’s national security advisor, was in Guatemala to attend Arévalo’s inauguration with a delegation of other high-level Biden administration officials.

The letter congratulated him on his victory and invited him to Washington for a meeting with Harris, according to a copy reviewed by Foreign Policy. But its real significance was spelled out between the lines. A senior administration official involved in the discussions said the letter was a “signal that the U.S. gives full-throated support to Arévalo and Guatemala’s democratic transition of power.”

The inauguration itself took place after midnight on Jan. 15, following a dramatic final effort by members of Guatemala’s outgoing government to halt the proceedings. Gordon and other members of the U.S. delegation were instrumental in ensuring the transition of power took place, having imposed sanctions and visa restrictions, and back channeled with other embassies to pressure Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei to accept the election results and step aside.

The democratic transition in Guatemala represents one of the clearest victories of U.S. President Joe Biden’s agenda to promote democracy worldwide, as well as a rare example of Vice President Kamala Harris’s national security team playing a distinct and direct role in shepherding it through, according to interviews with multiple administration insiders and Central America experts. The episode provides possible insights into how Harris’s foreign-policy team would work should she win the presidential election in November.

While it went relatively unnoticed in Washington, where people are largely focused on wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the U.S. maneuver to bolster democracy in Guatemala was a policy win—in stark contrast to some of the administration’s endeavors in other parts of the world. The Biden administration has faced criticism for embracing autocrats in ways that undermined his stated goals of promoting global democracy. Across West Africa, the United States has failed to stem an “epidemic” of coups that dealt a heavy blow to U.S. interests. In Afghanistan, which the United States withdrew from chaotically three years ago, democracy is more distant than ever.

“Probably the most key player for securing this transition for Arévalo was the international community and specifically the United States,” said Marielos Chang, a Guatemalan political consultant and professor at the Universidad del Valle in Guatemala.

When Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race last month and endorsed Harris, one of the many questions posed about the vice president was: What role had she played on foreign-policy issues? Many current and former U.S. national security officials say it is hard to discern where Harris and her small national security team have made a mark—but Guatemala stands as an exception.

Harris became the administration’s point person on Central America’s Northern Triangle region to tackle the root causes of migration, an assignment that later became a point of controversy on the campaign trail—and a source of criticism from Republicans. Migration encounters at the U.S. southern border hit a record high at the end of 2023, and border security and migration remains a major issue for both parties on the campaign trail, particularly for Republicans.

“President Biden gave Vice President Harris one job—‘border czar’—and she failed miserably,” Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said last month, echoing similar charges across the board from Republicans that the Harris campaign has sought to push back on.

Throughout her time as vice president, Harris and her national security team worked closely with Giammattei’s government to try to tackle the root causes of migration from the source, even before Guatemala’s transition crisis.

Guatemala is Central America’s most populous country and a key hub for the flow of migrants north toward the U.S. southern border.

One key initiative Harris’s team and other National Security Council (NSC) officials worked on with Giammattei was the “safe mobility office” initiative, to try to establish offices in the region where people could apply for asylum in the United States from afar or learn about the convoluted U.S. migration system before ever reaching the U.S. border.

Gordon met with Giammattei for over nine hours in one of his numerous trips to Guatemala as they hashed out these proposals, according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter. This official and others spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak on the record about internal government deliberations.

The National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit organization that tracks migration issues, has said that “much remains unclear about the offices’ operational realities” but that it is aimed at lessening the burden on immigration systems at the border and deterring people from trying to venture there in the first place.

Arévalo won Guatemala’s presidential election in August 2023 by a comfortable margin on a campaign of anti-corruption reforms. In the wake of the election, “we were starting to see signs that Giammattei’s administration was seeking to block the outcome of the free and fair elections and prevent a peaceful transfer of power,” said Katie Tobin, the former top Biden migration advisor at the NSC.

From there, Harris’s team was well placed to launch the pressure campaign on the outgoing government to accept the election results. It was also coordinated by the top U.S. diplomat at the time in Guatemala, Patrick Ventrell, and other State Department and Treasury Department officials, according to the officials familiar with the matter.

In October, the administration announced sanctions on Guatemalan officials linked to corruption. In November, Gordon traveled again to Guatemala to meet with both Giammattei and Arévalo separately to “reinforc[e] the importance of the peaceful democratic transfer of power,” according to a White House readout of the meetings at the time. Days after his visit, the Biden administration sanctioned another former top Guatemalan official for his role in “ongoing efforts to undermine the democratic transfer of power.”

Then, on Dec. 11, the State Department announced visa restrictions on nearly 300 Guatemalans, including over 100 Guatemalan members of Congress and other business elites, for “ongoing anti-democratic actions” that sought to interrupt the transition of power.

“That sent a really strong message to all politicians, that the United States was not going to be just waiting to see what happens,” Chang said. Chang said that Guatemalans paid close attention to the diplomatic campaign by the United States, and in particular the top U.S. diplomat there, Ventrell. Harris’s personal role, Chang said, wasn’t visible in Guatemala in the same way it was back in Washington in internal government deliberations.

The pressure appeared to be working, and Giammattei and his proxies began backing down. But there would be one last dramatic political battle, and members of Harris’s national security team would find themselves at the center of it.

Biden in January announced he was sending a delegation of eight senior U.S. officials to Guatemala for Arévalo’s inauguration, led by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power. The delegation also included Gordon and Tobin, as well as Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Lawmakers who opposed Arévalo threw up more roadblocks, delaying the special session of Congress to finish the inauguration and sparking fears of a last-minute coup. Arévalo’s supporters rallying to celebrate his inauguration grew increasingly restive and impatient as the hours dragged on, eventually clashing with riot police and gathering outside the congressional building.

The showdown also intersected with the U.S. election campaign, as one of former President Donald Trump’s top confidants, Ric Grenell, traveled to Guatemala in the days leading up to the inauguration and threw his support behind the efforts to derail Arévalo’s ascent to the presidency, as the Washington Post reported. Grenell reportedly backed hard-line conservatives who sought to block the transition and alleged that the U.S. foreign-policy establishment was trying to “intimidate conservatives” in the country. Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, has emerged as one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement advising Trump on his 2024 run.

On the day of the planned inauguration, Biden’s delegation went into crisis mode. “We were at the [U.S.] ambassador’s residence during this, for nine hours,” Tobin recalled. “The [USAID] administrator, Phil [Gordon], our charges d’affaires [Ventrell] were all making tons of calls to the outgoing government and incoming administration” and “coordinating with foreign delegations” in response to the eleventh-hour crisis, she said.

“We worked out a unified message as the international community there that we were expecting the Guatemalan government to do the right thing and uphold democratic values,” she added. They weren’t alone. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, who was also in Guatemala for the inauguration and has outsized political influence in the region, vowed not to leave until Arévalo was inaugurated.

In the end, the pressure from Guatemalan protesters and the international community worked. Arévalo was sworn in shortly after midnight on Jan. 15. “That transition almost didn’t happen, until it finally did,” Tobin said.

Shortly after the inauguration, Harris issued a statement “commend[ing] the people of Guatemala for making their voices heard and this important transition.” Her team has maintained close contact with Arévalo in the months since; Gordon met him along the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany in February and Arévalo took Harris up on her offer for a White House meeting, visiting Washington in March. Giammattei, meanwhile, has been barred from entering the United States over U.S. allegations of “his involvement in significant corruption,” according to the State Department.

“A lot of people have critical views of the United States as not always a good player regarding their actions in Latin America,” Chang said, citing Guatemala among other cases. “With this specific example, however, you can see how the United States can actually help in countries that are struggling with democratic transitions.”

[aerial-jace]

Guatpol Update

I've been scrolling the news these past few hours or so unable to sleep and since I said I'd post more about my own country's politics I thought to share what I have gleaned about the current top stories.

OLYMPICS!

You may not know but Guatemala actually had its first ever Olympic gold medallist (Adriana Ruano, women's trap shooting) and its first ever Olympic bronze medallist (Jean Pierre Brol, men's trap shooting). Alongside Erick Barrondo's Olympic silver medal in men's 20km racewalk from London 2012, this makes a complete set.

This is a big political story for a couple reasons, first off Ruano and Brol are getting a cash payout from the Guatemalan Olympic Committee, 3 million quetzales for the former and 1 million 250 thousand quetzales for the latter. (One Guatemalan quetzal is worth about 1/8 of a US dollar, for reference.) Second off, our recently elected president Bernardo Arevalo used last Saturday's celebration of the athletes to announce plans to spend more on sporting facilities. Very much an easy to sell proposition given the results on display.

But perhaps most importantly this is very much a political win for Arevalo personally. Due to the events surrounding our last election his government has been fighting an uphill battle to do much of anything. But something Arevalo has been able to do very effectively on his own is diplomacy and it is his diplomacy that averted Guatemala being excluded from the Olympics due to conflicts with the International Olympics Committee.

This crowd-pleaser victory may just be what he needs to keep support for his party, Movimiento Semilla, strong in spite of attacks from all other established parties. Speaking of...

LEGAL FOUL PLAY!

The current director of FECI, the legal prosecution office against corruption established after the independent UN observer body CICIG was dismantled, recently brought charges against and tried to remove legal immunity from Arevalo for allegedly wrongly dismissing a cabinet member. The cabinet member in question ignored orders to go through with a telecommunications contract that was allegedly corrupt. However, pretty much everyone agrees this is a politically motivated move, in line with a pattern of legal challenges brought since last year's elections whose actual purpose is to prevent Arevalo from governing. We will see where this goes but so far this move is being widely condemned.

COURT APPOINTMENT DELAYS!

In other legal news, the Guatemalan Supreme Court of Justice (whose members serve for 5 year terms) is yet to be appointed! We have been at this since 2019. Hurry the fuck up, goddammit. This is what a highly corrupt state and partisan fractioning gets us. At least if no more delays pop up we will maybe get this over with by September. Maybe.

BUDGET EXPANSION!

Credit where credit's due, even with a minority in congress and having to work with their direct political enemies Arevalo was able to finally approve the 14 thousand 451 million GTQ budget expansion he has been trying to get for most of the year. However, like Arevalo and Semilla's every other move, this isn't without legal challenges. At least the US ambassador seems to have expressed approval so maybe he can twist the opposition's arm into letting this one go.

TAX EVASION!

IMO the biggest story of right now is the discovery and investigation into a tax fraud and money laundering scheme to the tune of 300 million GTQ related to contracts awarded by the government of our last president, Alejandro Giammattei. This is perhaps a golden opportunity that just fell in Arevalo's lap as pursuing this scandal, a tax scandal 10 times the size of the famous 2015 La Linea scandal which gave birth to Moviniento Semilla, is perfect for the party to show its commitment to its founding principles. Here's hoping success prosecuting it strikes fear in the Guatemalan establishment and can serve as a stepping stone to reform.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

The Glitch

Heh. I rendered it for ya, Tumblr.

I've been told (repeatedly) this isn't a problem. I should know that when you say "white" you don't mean me... unless I get a little uppity (my dad, who is much browner than me, used to call me that) about being more than one thing, then I'm definitely white. Shut up. This isn't about you.

I know. It's never about me. It's never about anyone like me. I should just put myself wherever you wanted me to be, and if I guess wrong, you'll tell me. My unearned privileges are on a yo-yo string. Depends how I dress, how I code switch, who I'm near.

I understand that people who look a certain way will get treated a certain way, and then they'll act a certain way, and when they get treated white, the way they act is super irritating. OK, fam. I get it. But I see you acting that way too. I'm in the room, you don't see me, and you say some shit, which you assume is OK because everyone looks like you. And if they're not like you, you're confident you can say whatever you want because it'd be rude for them to mention it. Like Karen-the-feminist explaining that this is not the time or the place to mention that Take Your Daughter to Work Day doesn't do much for immigrant field workers.

Every time you offer me a binary choice, you're expecting me to erase half of myself without comment. If I sit down, I'm white today. If I stay standing, I'm "brown," which is... Jesus. If you thought "Black" made a monolith out of a shit-ton of identities, see what putting me in the same box with Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Guatemalans, Persians and both kinds of Indian gets you. We share a few marginalized traits but we do not all get along or need the same things.

I can't eject the white or the brown from my body on command, I can only fake it for ya to be nice. And you don't notice me doing that and think you're entitled.

I have a good dose of the autism, which I'm also expected to hide on command, so I can't help but bring media into this. You know this asshole?

He's mixed-race Creole. (And, ah, Vivzie, I'm enjoying the show, but I have... I have some notes.) I am positive this thin-skinned, narcissistic, serial-killing creep used to pass both ways, like me. I am positive he heard smiling people of both races say some real stupid shit about him and his family, to his face, and that's why he's like that. (I'm also pretty sure nobody writing for him has a clue.) But people sure do respect the serial killer and give him space. It gets better results than, "Hey, the collection of privileges you're calling 'whiteness' is a spectrum and you and I are both on it." And people react like I'm being just as much of a jackass anyway, if not more of one, although I am not literally murdering anyone about my grievance.

I am not saying I'm going to kill and eat you, my fellow activists, I'm just saying - in a gentle, loving, and metred tone - I understand.

The level of violence I inflict upon you will remain a polite reminder that I am in the room and I will not be erasing myself to conform to your language today. That seems to be difficult enough for y'all to deal with. Just, do be aware, I am still being civil. I am using my words. This is what civility looks like. Uncivil looks like drop-kicking you into a bucket of remoulade. OK? Please adjust your outrage accordingly.

(Though I have elected to share these aspects of myself with you, Tumblr void, please be aware this is only a small part of who I am, and not an invitation to define me. If you wanna talk about you, that's cool. If you wanna be friends, I will tell you how I want to be treated as we go along. I will not perform my identity in a public forum in order to justify my - polite and not-at-all murdery - request that you maybe try not to be dicks about assigning people whiteness, or brownness, or any identity that you think ought to behave a certain way.)

[dankusner]

Goodbye to the Most Powerful Man in Texas Government You’ve Never Heard Of

You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of the most powerful unelected man in Texas politics.

Steve McCraw, the longtime director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, is not exactly a household name.

And even his legions of fans and critics at the Capitol routinely botch his name, calling him Steve McGraw.

Yet McCraw, who abruptly announced last week that he would retire by the end of the year, has changed Texas government and politics far more than most of the elected officials he theoretically answers to.

He is the J. Edgar Hoover of Texas—a lawman-politician whose power grew alongside his longevity and usefulness to the Republican Party.

And like Hoover, he seems preternaturally gifted at escaping accountability.

Over time, he became too big to fail.

In 2004, Governor Rick Perry plucked McCraw from the FBI to serve as state homeland security director.

In that role, McCraw alarmed civil libertarians and some lawmakers by overseeing the construction of the Texas Data Exchange (TDEx), a massive intelligence database controlled by the governor’s office.

McCraw also helped Perry launch the state’s giant experiment of taking on the heretofore federal responsibility of policing the border.

Perry appointed him to lead DPS in 2009.

McCraw brought with him his post-9/11-era focus on intelligence gathering and obsession with “spillover violence” from Mexico.

Law enforcement traditionalists watched McCraw’s transformation of DPS with some alarm.

Would the agency still be able to effectively perform its core crime-fighting functions—highway enforcement and major state criminal investigations—if its leader was more attuned to Al Qaeda and Los Zetas?

When McCraw took the lead at the agency, he inherited one of the most high-profile criminal cases in modern Texas history—the Governor’s Mansion arson.

In 2008, someone threw a Molotov cocktail into the stately mansion while Perry and his wife, Anita, were in Europe.

Three years later, DPS released tantalizing details about persons of interest—with links to anarchists—the agency was looking into.

“We don’t believe in coincidences,” McCraw told reporters at the time.

For a while, it looked as if McCraw would solve the crime of the decade, proving to his critics that DPS could still solve major criminal cases the old-fashioned way.

But the case fizzled and remains unsolved sixteen years later.

If lawmakers were concerned that DPS had missed a step in solving a major crime, they didn’t show it.

McCraw’s bosses—Perry and the Legislature—had bigger concerns than arson.

By the time Perry ran for his third term, in 2010, border security had emerged as the sine qua non of Republican politics.

(Sine qua non is Latin for “ain’t nuthin’ better.”)

Perry developed a fetish for militarizing the border—and McCraw was happy to oblige, overseeing the build-out of the nation’s first full-blown state border-security apparatus.

Suddenly, DPS gunboats equipped with mounted .30-caliber guns were roaring up and down the Rio Grande while an army of state troopers flooded Texas border communities, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.

“We’re using tactics and equipment that you will see in war zones,” a DPS captain told a documentary film crew in early 2012.

Six months later, a DPS sniper, operating from a helicopter, opened fire on a speeding F-150 near the border town of La Joya.

He assumed, wrongly, that the truck was carrying drugs.

Six Guatemalan migrants were hiding in the bed under a tarp.

The sniper shot three of them, killing two.

McCraw called the killing “very tragic” but insisted that the “recklessly speeding” truck posed a threat to an elementary school several miles away.

Why was DPS the only domestic law enforcement agency in the country to allow cops to shoot at moving vehicles from helicopters?

What responsibility did the DPS director bear for the consequences of waging a deadly war in Texas communities?

GOP lawmakers seemed curiously uninterested in such questions.

“There’s no need for a hearing,” said state representative Sid Miller, who was the chair of the Texas House Committee on Homeland Security & Public Safety.

(Miller is now the state agriculture commissioner.)

Not long after Greg Abbott became governor, in 2015, he doubled down on border militarization.

And then tripled and quadrupled.

Today the Texas-Mexico border is arguably the most important stage in the world for American politicians—the photo op that has launched and sustained a thousand Republican careers.

If the border was theater, the DPS director was the prop guy, stage manager, and supporting actor all in one.

In front of TV cameras and at hearings at the Capitol, McCraw often appears in uniform—Texas tan, cowboy hat—and delivers a blizzard of homeland security–inflected cop talk about “force multipliers” and the “vertical stack” of “detection coverage” offered by drones, cameras, and “tactical” boats.

For a time, during Abbott’s first term, lawmakers and the press took a critical look at what the data said about the success rate of the state’s border operations.

The results were dismal.

What they found was that DPS was trying to take credit for drug seizures made by other agencies and classifying routine police work hundreds of miles from the border as part of its border efforts.

DPS troopers seemed to spend a lot of their time writing tickets to RGV motorists in overwhelmingly Hispanic counties while neglecting traffic enforcement in other parts of the state.

In a report to the Legislature in 2015, McCraw offered a utopian vision of success:

“[The border] will be secure when all smuggling events between the ports of entry are detected and interdicted.”

That could be achieved, the report said, with “the permanent assignment of a sufficient number” of troopers and Texas Rangers, along with a network of security cameras and surveillance aircraft.

On the face of it, this is a wild claim.

Anyone with a passing familiarity with Texas’s 1,254-mile border with Mexico knows that catching every smuggler is the stuff of fantasy.

But the accountability moment in the Legislature quickly passed.

The politics of cracking down on a supposed border “invasion”—Abbott’s preferred term—were too good to let facts get in the way.

Lawmakers showered the DPS director with more money, more responsibilities.

In 2023, the Legislature gave DPS $1.2 billion for border operations, a 28 percent increase.

Though apprehensions of unauthorized migrants have plummeted across the Southwestern border in recent months, there is no evidence that Texas’s efforts are responsible.

A measure of McCraw’s importance is the fallout—or lack thereof—from his agency’s handling of the Uvalde shooting.

Lest we forget, close to 400 law enforcement agents, including 91 DPS officers, took more than an hour to confront the gunman responsible for the deaths of 19 fourth graders and 2 teachers.

While children pleaded with 911 for help, heavily armed cops stood around in the hallways.

Afterward, various agencies and officers would blame one another.

But in the moment, parents knew exactly what to do.

Several tried to rush into the school but were physically blocked by police officers.

One mother was arrested.

Subsequent investigations found that the police prioritized their own safety over saving lives.

In the aftermath of the shooting, high-ranking DPS personnel provided misleading information about the police response, with McCraw initially telling reporters at a press conference the next day that officers did immediately “engage” the shooter.

This was, we would later learn, totally false.

Abbott mused that “it could have been worse” without the “amazing courage” of the police.

Abbott has never said who gave him the misinformation.

Soon after the shooting, the governor sternly admonished DPS and the Texas Rangers—the iconic agents are a unit of DPS—to get to the bottom of what went wrong.

This was a bit like asking the livestock guardian dog to investigate how the fox got into the henhouse.

What were the chances that McCraw was going to incriminate his own agency and, by extension, himself and the governor?

The grieving Uvalde parents calling for his resignation might have earned the attention of the press, but he had the ear of the governor.

For the next two years, DPS engaged in a tireless effort to point the finger at Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde CISD police chief, while casting a veil of secrecy over a mountain of information that could shed full light on the shooting.

To this day, a coalition of media outlets is engaged in litigation to pry records loose from DPS, though at this point it’s not clear what else there is to learn about the ways the authorities failed those children and teachers.

In 2022, McCraw called the law enforcement response an “abject failure” and vowed to resign if DPS had “any culpability.”

Subsequent investigations found plenty of culpability.

A U.S. Department of Justice report blamed one Texas Ranger for not challenging Arredondo on the lack of urgency.

The report also faulted DPS South Texas director Victor Escalon for failing to establish a perimeter outside the classrooms to preserve the integrity of the crime scene and for compromising the integrity of the crime scene by wandering around without purpose.

As for the investigation into the 91 DPS officers?

To date, McCraw has done very little to hold his employees accountable.

One trooper, Sergeant Juan Maldonado, was served with termination papers but quit before his firing was finalized.

McCraw had initially tried to fire another Ranger, Christopher Ryan Kindell, but then, in early August, McCraw quietly reinstated him.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, McCraw said the Uvalde County DA had requested the reinstatement after a grand jury declined to charge any DPS officers with crimes connected to the shooting.

In reinstating Kindell, McCraw also avoided a public appeal hearing—and further scrutiny—into the roles played by high-ranking DPS officials.

McCraw, of course, did not resign.

Instead, he got a raise.

Last year his overseers at the Texas Public Safety Commission—all Abbott appointees—gave him a roughly $45,500 boost to his salary, bringing it to more than $345,000.

On the day of his retirement announcement, August 23, McCraw’s press team made available a cache of photos to commemorate his service.

There’s a shot of McCraw riding in a DPS gunboat with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick—a classic photo op.

One of him serving food to troopers and guardsmen deployed to the border.

But there’s one that seems to best capture the moment.

Abbott is in the foreground of the photo, but he’s blurry.

McCraw, looking contemplative in his uniform and cowboy hat, is the focus of attention.

The same day those photos were released, Abbott kept the spotlight on his appointee.

Steve McCraw, he said, is “a leader, visionary, and the quintessential lawman that Texas is so famous for—big, white cowboy hat and all.”

Brett Cross, the father of a boy who died at Robb Elementary, had a different take.

“Good riddance,” he wrote on X. “You’re an embarrassment to this state. You’re an embarrassment to this country.”

[newstfionline]

Saturday, June 22, 2024

New Louisiana law requiring classrooms to display Ten Commandments churns old political conflicts (AP) A bill signed into law this week makes Louisiana the only state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom in public schools and colleges—and stirs the long-running debate over the role of religion in government institutions. Under the new law, all public K-12 classrooms and state-funded universities will be required to display a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” next year. Civil liberties groups planned lawsuits to block the law signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, saying it would unconstitutionally breach protections against government-imposed religion. State officials are stressing the history of the Ten Commandments, which the bill calls “foundational documents of our state and national government.”

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo says he found a ‘semi-destroyed country’ on taking office (AP) Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo says opposition in the Congress and the Attorney General’s Office have made it difficult to implement the change he seeks for the Central American nation which he found “semi-destroyed” when he took office almost six months ago. The politician from the progressive Seed Movement party was elected in August after voters angry at widespread corruption and leaders’ failure to tackle it made a decisive choice for change, elevating his long shot candidacy. Central America’s most populous country and the region’s largest economy continues to struggle with poverty and violence that have driven hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans to migrate to the U.S. “What has impacted me the most is seeing how corruption has impacted the executive capacity of all the country’s institutions; the levels of abandonment and dysfunctionality of the institutions are terrible,” Arévalo said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Argentina’s president promises to quash corruption, then shocks with his Supreme Court pick (AP) Campaigning last year as a libertarian outsider, Javier Milei electrified rallies with his vows to destroy Argentina’s corrupt political elite. But the eccentric economist-turned-president now faces accusations of hypocrisy over his Supreme Court nomination. What makes his choice of Ariel Lijo, 55, so extraordinary is not just the judge’s lack of appellate experience or scant scholarly publications, but that he has been accused of conspiracy, money laundering and illicit enrichment, and has come under scrutiny for more ethics violations than almost any other judge in his court’s history. But Lijo has allies across the political spectrum, and Milei predicts an easy confirmation. “Lijo is special in that he can get the votes,” said Alberto Garay, president of the Buenos Aires Bar Association. “It’s not about getting respected jurists in the court, it’s about friends.”

Bather, beware: British beaches and rivers have a sewage problem (AP) Endurance swimmer Joan Fennelly is undaunted by frigid water and long distances, swimming year-round in the wild. But she takes extra precautions in her own backyard. The River Thames is one of Britain’s many waterways contaminated with sewage and agricultural pollution. Britain has become notorious as a place where a casual swim could lead to an extended visit to the toilet, if not the hospital. A torrent of news on dirty water has spilled into next month’s election to determine which party controls government for the next four or five years. While not a top campaign issue, it stinks of a larger problem: Britain’s aging infrastructure—from aging schools, hospitals and prisons to pothole-riddled streets.

Vatican charges pope critic Carlo Maria Viganò with the crime of schism (Washington Post) He has called Pope Francis a liberal “servant of Satan,” demanded his resignation and suggested that the Vatican’s Swiss Guard arrest the 87-year-old pontiff. Now, after receiving years of withering verbal attacks, Francis appears to have struck back against Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Vatican ambassador to the United States and the pope’s most ardent internal critic. The Vatican’s disciplinary body, the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal decree—made public by Viganò on Thursday—assigning the senior cleric to a penal canon trial. The charges: the “crime of schism” and “denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis.” Francis has weathered conservative criticism for years, including vitriolic attacks from within clerical ranks. But church codes require clerical fealty.

U.S. will boost Ukraine’s air defense by pausing exports to allies (Washington Post) The United States will suspend the planned export of hundreds of air defense munitions to its allies and partners and redirect them to Ukraine, the White House said Thursday, as Russia continues its assault on the country’s power grid and other vital infrastructure. The White House characterized the shift as a “difficult but necessary decision” as Ukraine’s military and civilian infrastructure face unrelenting Russian bombardment.

Ukraine says its drones struck four Russian oil refineries in major attack (Reuters) Ukrainian long-range attack drones struck four Russian oil refineries as well as radar stations and other military targets in Russia in a major attack in the early hours of Friday, Kyiv's military said. Ukraine has dramatically stepped up its use of drones this year to attack Russian oil facilities, which it deems legitimate military targets that are fuelling Russian troops in their nearly 28-month-old invasion. Russia's military said earlier that it had downed 70 drones over the Black Sea and Ukraine's occupied Crimean peninsula, 43 drones over Russia's Krasnodar region and one more over Russia's Volgograd region on Friday.

Asian Fears Come True as North Korea’s Russia Pact Amplifies Threat (NYT) With ballistic missiles regularly flying nearby, Japan and South Korea need little reminder of the threat that North Korea and its nuclear arsenal pose to its neighbors. But the stunning revival of a Cold War-era mutual defense agreement during a visit this week by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, amped up the pressure on some of the hermit kingdom’s closest neighbors. Mr. Putin and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, agreed that if one country found itself in a state of war, then the other would provide “military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay,” according to the text of the agreement released Thursday by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. Analysts were still sorting through the text of the agreement to understand how far it would extend, either in terms of Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine or any future conflict on the Korean Peninsula. But the pledge, along with indications that Russia could help bolster North Korea’s continuing quest to build its nuclear capabilities, rattled officials in Tokyo and Seoul.

The Israeli military said Hamas can’t be destroyed, escalating a feud with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (WSJ) Its top spokesman called the idea “misleading to the public.” Netanyahu has said the main aims of the war in Gaza are “total victory” over Hamas and the return of Israeli hostages held by the group. The Prime Minister’s Office said that the country’s military is “of course committed” to the stated war goals. Military leadership argue that Hamas could only be defeated if Israel replaces it with another governing authority in Gaza. Tensions with Netanyahu have been present for months. Meanwhile, families of hostages are desperate for news but dread a phone call from the military, as more captives have come home dead in recent months.

Israeli Official Describes Secret Government Bid to Cement Control of West Bank (NYT) An influential member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition told settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that the government is engaged in a stealthy effort to irreversibly change the way the territory is governed, to cement Israel’s control over it without being accused of formally annexing it. In a taped recording of the speech, the official, Bezalel Smotrich, can be heard suggesting at a private event earlier this month that the goal was to prevent the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state. “I’m telling you, it’s mega-dramatic,” Mr. Smotrich told the settlers. “Such changes change a system’s DNA.” While Mr. Smotrich’s opposition to ceding control over the West Bank is no secret, the Israeli government’s official position is that the West Bank’s status remains open to negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Mr. Smotrich’s June 9 speech at a West Bank gathering may make that posture harder to maintain. In it, he outlined a carefully orchestrated program to take authority over the West Bank out of the hands of the Israeli military and turn it over to civilians working for Mr. Smotrich in the defense ministry. Parts of the plan have already been incrementally introduced over the past 18 months, and some authorities have already been transferred to civilians.

One person killed, over 200 injured in Kenya tax protests (Reuters) One person was killed and at least 200 people injured across Kenya in Thursday's nationwide protests against government plans to raise $2.7 billion in additional taxes, an alliance of rights groups and the police watchdog said. Police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters in the capital Nairobi, the five rights groups, which include Amnesty International and the Kenya Medical Association, said in a joint statement late on Thursday. The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) said on Friday it had documented the death of a man "allegedly as a result of police shooting and several serious injuries suffered by other demonstrators including police officers." Protesters want the government to completely abandon its finance bill, saying it will choke the economy and raise the cost of living for Kenyans who are already struggling to make ends meet.

The lasting impression of kindness (NPR) One winter day in 1996, Lorrie Paul was sitting in a hospital in Syracuse, N.Y. Her father, who had just had open heart surgery, was in the intensive care unit. When dividing her attention between taking care of her mom and talking to the doctors became too overwhelming, Paul decided to take a walk through the hospital. After wandering for a bit, she stopped at a windowsill to look out. “[I] just stared out at nothing. And I started to sob. It got to be too much, and I just thought, 'I'm gonna lose my dad.'" As she cried, Paul felt a reassuring hand on her left shoulder. She instantly felt at peace. "Having someone there and showing that compassion—that love—brought me this sense of calm," Paul said. "They didn't try to fix the situation. They didn't try to console me. They didn't try to find out what was going on. It was just presence." Her sobs subsided, and she felt her body relax. Then the stranger squeezed her shoulder and simply walked away. Paul doesn't know who the person was. But nearly 30 years later, she says she still thinks about that person often. "It was so incredibly powerful," Paul said.

Walking Can Be a Powerful Remedy for Back Pain (NYT) Doctors and physical therapists have long incorporated aerobic exercise into treatment programs for lower back pain. Movement can simultaneously ease lower back pain and also strengthen the muscles that support your back. Still, many people with back pain can be hesitant to exercise. A new study, published on Wednesday in The Lancet, offers more evidence on the power of movement. The study found that a regular walking routine can be very effective for preventing the recurrence of back pain. The study focused on adults with a history of low back pain; those who walked regularly went nearly twice as long without their back pain coming back compared to the control group. The new findings are in line with a large body of existing research that has established an association between physical activity and better outcomes for back pain.

[blackholebaybee]

The thing about dumbfucks is that they seem to think that when we say that everything is political and politics are relational, they think we're saying it as a fad rather than as a scientific observation. But this is a problem of liberals (whether they're conservative or "socially liberal") projecting their views onto reality. They think everyone else treats politics like a fad because that is how *they* treat politics, being the deeply unserious people that they are.

But here's the realness: when we say, on the "far left", that, for example, you can't be anti-racist without being anti-colonial/communist/etc., it is because we have trained ourselves to view political struggle scientifically. That is, we understand that racism will always exist as long as capitalism exists because capitalism *necessitates* the dispossession of certain groups to the benefit of certain others. Black people and migrants in Amerikkka are kept poor and disenfranchised by a system that was designed with the intention of using them for mass slave labour, the function of which has been taken over by the prison system officially and by clandestine trafficking operations unofficially (California, Georgia, Texas, Florida, New York, Nevada, Ohio as if Ohio couldn't get any worse). Both of these situations, while obviously immoral (the liberal concern), are quite profitable for the companies that make use of this subjugated labour force. These same companies make use of their ample profits to lobby the government to ignore these operations or even expand them. (See any conservative crime bills, especially as they relate to private prisons.)

This obviously isn't enough to make the point, so let's develop it further. Migrants make their way to the imperial core in search of a "better life" (liberal perception), but they do not flee "bad lives" in a vacuum. *All* refugee crises, all migrant crises are the direct result of foreign policy decisions enacted by bourgeois governments in the imperial core. These imperial governments have a vested interest in maintaining global hegemony, that is, total economic domination over all potential competitors. Taking South and Central America as our first example, every single time a Latin American country attempted to achieve some measure of independence from the imperial core, the United States would go to work to destabilize and overthrow democratically elected governments in favour of brutal military dictatorships. In Guatemala, the CIA launched Operation PBSUCCESS in 1954, bombing Guatemala City and installed several military rulers *in response* to Guatemalans successfully overthrowing a puppet dictatorship representing the interests of the United Fruit Company (also US-backed) and electing a progressive government that sought agrarian reforms in favour of Guatemalan independence. When Haiti tried to throw off the shackles of the CIA-sponsored Tonton Macoute militia regime, the CIA stepped in again to inflate the size of the former to double the size of the Hatian military. This period was marked by prison and torture camps with the aim of suppressing all dissent. For more examples, see here and here for fuller lists of Latin American invasions and operations. The same methodology is being waged in the Middle-East as well. You can read about it here and here. The reasons for these invasions, US-backed coups, destabilization efforts, and war aggression is always, always, always about the strategic interests of imperial hegemony. They are always concerned with preserving a state of affairs where the imperial core can reap massive profits from cheap labour and streamlined resource extraction (blood for oil, etc.). This general strategy of total domination and deliberate dispossession is and will remain the primary reason for all migrant crises.

We identify anti-colonialism and communism as the proper and *only* solutions to these problems because these ideologies and strategies were devised as *systemic responses* to the systemic problems created by capitalism and colonialism. These are not lefty ideas made up out of thin air. Colonialism and capitalism are historical processes which were and are heavily documented by the colonists and capitalists. They willfully admit that they are the engineers of these systems. And every time a liberal assumes that this state of affairs is simply natural, that is the inevitable result of a centuries-long strategy of world domination and propaganda designed specifically to make this state of affairs seem all-encompassing and natural. But if these things were natural, the imperial core wouldn't have to spend trillions of dollars bombing, murdering, and pillaging every single attempt to change it. Nature needs no assistance. Indeed, the Red Scare, which is still ongoing, exists to convince liberals that there is no alternative specifically because communism *is* a major threat to the brutality of capitalism and thus needs to be combated by the bourgeoisie and their running dogs the same way that every coup and genocide instigated by the CIA was for the purpose of "bringing democracy" to the so-called barbarous Middle-East and Latin America. Thus, they characterize us and our ideology as murderous and apocalyptic, but we should never forget the confession of one Elon Musk who, as many of us still remember, proudly declared "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it." To take this as a joke, given all the evidence here provided, would be naive, to say the least. We choose socialism as our weapon against the imperial core because socialism is a scientific strategy developed by the working class for the purpose of taking control away from these forces and, for the first time, learning to govern our own affairs, the most horrifying outcome of all to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, whose brutality and apocalyptic tendencies require no propaganda because the evidence is all around us, filling our phones daily with atrocity after atrocity, cutting our kin down in the streets, levelling our cities, eroding all semblance of safety in and outside the workplace.

We say that everything is political and that politics are relational because that is what simple observation reveals. That is why reactionaries are increasingly irrationalist and anti-intellectualist by default. They cannot cope with the reality of the situation around them because to truly understand it would be to implicate them in a class war so all-encompassing that no comfort or succor exists outside of active struggle, which carries the very real risk of losing one's life and the lives of loved ones. But it is a decision an ever-increasing number are making for a better future because our present has already been robbed from us. No one is irrational when a gun barrel is pointed in their face.

[combinedmixture]

Never have these ideological contortions been as conspicuous as during Israel’s war in Gaza. Liberal hawks often profess their commitment to human rights. Yet they haven’t called for ending a war that is killing more people per day than any conflict this century. They haven’t done so because, like their allies in the Biden administration, they are wedded to a narrative about the moral superiority of American power that this war defies. Liberal hawks want to preserve American primacy, which they associate with human progress. But Israel-Palestine reveals a harsher truth: that in much of the world, for many decades, the US has used its power not to defend freedom but to deny it. That’s why liberal hawks can’t face the true horror of this war. Doing so would require them to reconsider their deepest assumptions about America’s role in the world. [...] But there are many places, especially in the global south, that do not fit this story of American power producing moral progress. The story doesn’t account for the 62 times, according to the political scientist Dov Levin, that the United States intervened in foreign elections between 1946 and 1989, nor the fact that, according to Lindsey O’Rourke’s book Covert Regime Change, many of the leftist parties the US sabotaged had “repeatedly committed themselves to working within a democratic framework, and, in some cases, US policymakers even acknowledged this fact”. The story doesn’t account for US complicity in Indonesia’s killing of roughly 1 million alleged leftists in the mid-1960s or the CIA’s role in helping apartheid South Africa arrest Nelson Mandela. It can’t be reconciled with the Nixon administration’s decision to keep arming Pakistan’s war in what became Bangladesh when America’s own chief diplomat on the ground told them that the Pakistanis were committing genocide or the Reagan administration’s insistence on supplying weapons to President Efraín Ríos Montt, whom a Guatemalan court later convicted of genocide for his effort to wipe out his country’s Maya Ixil Indians. The story doesn’t explain the George HW Bush and Clinton administrations’ sanctions against Iraq, which the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in that country warned were “destroying an entire society” or the Obama administration’s participation in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ blockade and indiscriminate bombing of Yemen, which left 18 million of the country’s 28 million people without reliable access to food. Israel-Palestine is part of a darker history about the era of American primacy that liberal hawks celebrate and wish to preserve. For decades, the United States has used its unparalleled military might and diplomatic muscle to ensure that Israel can deny millions of Palestinians the most basic rights – citizenship, due process, freedom of movement, the right to vote – with impunity.

[blackleftis]

The United States has made contentious claims about Russia, China, Cuba, and North Korea. Some notable examples include exaggerated allegations of Russian interference in U.S. elections and accusations of collusion. The U.S. has also accused China of intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices, although the evidence supporting these claims can vary. In the case of Cuba, the U.S. has made allegations of supporting terrorism despite a lack of recent evidence. Additionally, there have been overstated claims regarding the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear capabilities, at times without concrete evidence. Re Slide 8: 1. Operation Paperclip: Recruiting German scientists, some with Nazi ties, for the U.S. after WWII. 2. Operation Condor: Covert intelligence program suppressing political dissidents in South America. 3. Operation Mockingbird: Alleged CIA program to influence and manipulate media organizations. 4. COINTELPRO: FBI programs infiltrating and discrediting political and social groups. 5. Operation Northwoods: Proposed false flag operations to justify Cuban military intervention. 6. MK Ultra: CIA program for mind control and interrogation techniques. 7. Operation CHAOS: CIA domestic surveillance targeting activists. 8. Operation Gladio: NATO program conducting covert operations in Europe during the Cold War. 9. Operation Ajax: CIA-led coup overthrowing Iran's Prime Minister in 1953. 10. Operation Cyclone: CIA support to Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union. 11. Operation Mongoose: Covert program to overthrow the Cuban government. 12. Operation Ranch Hand: Spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam to destroy crops and foliage. 13. Operation Brother Sam: Support to the Brazilian military regime during dictatorship. 14. Operation PBSUCCESS: CIA-led coup overthrowing the Guatemalan government in 1954. 15. Operation TPAJAX: CIA-led coup overthrowing Iran's Prime Minister in 1953. 16. Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Unethical study observing untreated African American men with syphilis. 17. MK Naomi: CIA program researching biological weapons and covert administration of lethal substances.

[my-weird-news]

EPIC Victory! 🚀 Arévalo Dominates Guatemala's Elections!

A Whirlwind of Anticorruption Delight Sweeps Over Guatemala's Political Landscape Ahoy, fellow seekers of political amusement and gobsmacking election results! Hold onto your hats, because the stage is set, and the curtains have been drawn back on a Guatemalan political circus that even the clowns can't ignore. 🎪 Picture this: Bernardo Arévalo, the polyglot sociologist extraordinaire, swoops onto the scene with his Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement) crew, composed mostly of urban professionals who've apparently decided that it's time to give the old political establishment a swift kick in the trousers. 🌱👞 In a daring display of electoral acrobatics, Arévalo clinches a whopping 58 percent of the votes, leaving his opponent Sandra Torres, a former first lady, sputtering in the dust with a measly 37 percent. But hey, the math checks out, and who said being a polyglot sociologist doesn't pay off? Let's just hope he's as fluent in governance as he is in languages. 🗳️🤓 Enter Alejandro Giammattei, the outgoing president who's legally restrained from chasing that elusive re-election dream. Instead, he graciously extends an invitation for a seamless transition of power, because, let's face it, who needs drama when you can have a nice, orderly passing of the torch? 🕊️🤝 But wait, there's more! Arévalo, the star of the show, pledges to put an end to the epic saga of "Political Persecution: Guatemala Edition." He's not here for it, folks. It's like he's saying, "Let's all just chill, people, and focus on things like corruption, human rights, and the environment, shall we?" 🌍🤷‍♂️ And speaking of voters, Mauricio Armas, a self-proclaimed non-believer in candidates, suddenly sees the light and decides to cast his sacred ballot in the name of change. "These Movimiento Semilla folks," he exclaims, "they're like the cool kids who haven't been tainted by criminal shenanigans." After all, who wants a candidate with skeletons in their closet? ☠️🚪 Now, let's talk about Arévalo's conservative competitor, Sandra Torres. She's been around the block a few times, showing up as the runner-up in previous elections and even divorcing her way into candidacy (yep, you read that right). Maybe the third time's the charm? Or maybe she should consider a career in soap operas instead. 📺💔 As for their platforms, Arévalo and Torres both agree that Guatemala's infrastructure is looking a bit lackluster. Paved roads? Who needs 'em, right? Let's just build thousands of miles of new ones and throw in a subway line for good measure. Hey, at least they're thinking big! 🚇🚗 But what sets Arévalo apart from the rest is his battle cry against corruption. He's not messing around, folks. He's waving his anticorruption flag high and mighty, promising to wrestle corruption to the ground like a professional luchador. 🤼‍♂️💥 And let's not forget the exhilarating side notes: judges resigning due to threats, homemade bombs at voting centers (because, why not?), and a sprinkling of uncertainty with high abstention rates. Democracy in action, my friends! 🎉🔥 So, here we are, witnessing the rise of a new era, an era of polyglot politicians, catchy slogans, and promises of profound change. Will Bernardo Arévalo and his Seed Movement prove to be the refreshing breeze Guatemala needs, or will they be swept up in the political maelstrom like discarded confetti? Only time will tell, but one thing's for certain: the comedy show is far from over! 🎭🤣# A Whirlwind of Anticorruption Delight Sweeps Over Guatemala's Political Landscape Ahoy, fellow seekers of political amusement and gobsmacking election results! Hold onto your hats, because the stage is set, and the curtains have been drawn back on a Guatemalan political circus that even the clowns can't ignore. 🎪 Picture this: Bernardo Arévalo, the polyglot sociologist extraordinaire, swoops onto the scene with his Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement) crew, composed mostly of urban professionals who've apparently decided that it's time to give the old political establishment a swift kick in the trousers. 🌱👞 In a daring display of electoral acrobatics, Arévalo clinches a whopping 58 percent of the votes, leaving his opponent Sandra Torres, a former first lady, sputtering in the dust with a measly 37 percent. But hey, the math checks out, and who said being a polyglot sociologist doesn't pay off? Let's just hope he's as fluent in governance as he is in languages. 🗳️🤓 Enter Alejandro Giammattei, the outgoing president who's legally restrained from chasing that elusive re-election dream. Instead, he graciously extends an invitation for a seamless transition of power, because, let's face it, who needs drama when you can have a nice, orderly passing of the torch? 🕊️🤝 But wait, there's more! Arévalo, the star of the show, pledges to put an end to the epic saga of "Political Persecution: Guatemala Edition." He's not here for it, folks. It's like he's saying, "Let's all just chill, people, and focus on things like corruption, human rights, and the environment, shall we?" 🌍🤷‍♂️ And speaking of voters, Mauricio Armas, a self-proclaimed non-believer in candidates, suddenly sees the light and decides to cast his sacred ballot in the name of change. "These Movimiento Semilla folks," he exclaims, "they're like the cool kids who haven't been tainted by criminal shenanigans." After all, who wants a candidate with skeletons in their closet? ☠️🚪 Now, let's talk about Arévalo's conservative competitor, Sandra Torres. She's been around the block a few times, showing up as the runner-up in previous elections and even divorcing her way into candidacy (yep, you read that right). Maybe the third time's the charm? Or maybe she should consider a career in soap operas instead. 📺💔 As for their platforms, Arévalo and Torres both agree that Guatemala's infrastructure is looking a bit lackluster. Paved roads? Who needs 'em, right? Let's just build thousands of miles of new ones and throw in a subway line for good measure. Hey, at least they're thinking big! 🚇🚗 But what sets Arévalo apart from the rest is his battle cry against corruption. He's not messing around, folks. He's waving his anticorruption flag high and mighty, promising to wrestle corruption to the ground like a professional luchador. 🤼‍♂️💥 And let's not forget the exhilarating side notes: judges resigning due to threats, homemade bombs at voting centers (because, why not?), and a sprinkling of uncertainty with high abstention rates. Democracy in action, my friends! 🎉🔥 So, here we are, witnessing the rise of a new era, an era of polyglot politicians, catchy slogans, and promises of profound change. Will Bernardo Arévalo and his Seed Movement prove to be the refreshing breeze Guatemala needs, or will they be swept up in the political maelstrom like discarded confetti? Only time will tell, but one thing's for certain: the comedy show is far from over! 🎭🤣 Read the full article

[zvaigzdelasas]

Guatemala could see a vote recount before the second round of its presidential election in August, where former first lady Sandra Torres is expected to face center-left Bernardo Arevalo. The first round of the vote last weekend presented a highly fractured political landscape in the Central American state, with centrist Torres securing only 15.8% of the ballots to place first. Even against this background of political division, however, the performance of her rival Arevalo from the center-left Semilla party was higher than expected — Arevalo received 11.8% of the vote after garnering substantial support in larger cities. This was enough for him to come in second and secure a place in the runoff vote.

The conservative Vamos party's candidate, Mario Conde, took third place with just over 10% of ballots cast in his favor.[...]

On Saturday, Guatemala's constitutional court ordered the results from the first round of presidential elections to be reviewed. The judges reached the decision after hearing a joint appeal by nine political parties, including frontrunner Torres' UNE party and current President Alejandro Giammattei's Vamos party. The court said that Guatemalan authorities would check votes from the first round to see if they meet legal requirements, especially in the case of suspected irregularities.

Days after the vote, Torres said she was concerned that voters had been manipulated by a faulty digital voting system into selecting Arevalo's Semilla. Meanwhile, Arevalo told citizens to remain vigilant in the face of attempts to manipulate the results. "We can't let the same old parties, frustrated and disappointed by their poor results in the first round, tarnish and call into question the free decision of thousands of Guatemalans," he said in a video posted on social media after the constitutional court announced its decision. Observers from the Organization of American States said that the election appeared to have been carried out fairly.

2 Jul 23

The U.S. is deeply concerned about efforts to interfere with Guatemala's first-round presidential election result, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday, a day after Guatemala's top court ordered ballots be reviewed[...]

The European Union, which monitored the vote and backed the results announced by the Electoral Tribunal, called on Guatemala's institutions and political parties to respect the electoral process and what it called the "clearly manifested will of citizens."

2 Jul 23

[whatisonthemoon]

The Reinvention of the Latin American Right

Original url: https://nacla.org/reinvention-latin-american-right Across the hemisphere and beyond, right-wing forces are leveraging the power of internationalism to galvanize hardline “resistance” against a new wave of leftist governments.

April 11, 2023 Luis Herrán-Ávila

▲ Pictured: Eduardo Bolsonaro (second from left) speaks alongside Eduardo Verástegui (left) at CPAC 2022 in Florida, February 26, 2022. (VOX ESPAÑA / CC0 1.0)

In November 2022, key figures of the Latin America Right gathered at an upscale hotel in Mexico City. On stage, the main organizer, Eduardo Verástegui, a Mexican actor, producer, and former advisor to Donald Trump on policies concerning the Latino community, gifted a Mexican football jersey to Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the then-outgoing president. The jersey’s number, 27, alluded to Bolsonaro as a possible presidential candidate in Brazil's 2027 elections. As Verástegui harshly attacked the Left and the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Bolsonaro in turn praised him as a potential far-right candidate in Mexico’s 2024 elections, eliciting cheers from the crowd. For Verástegui, the conference represented conservative unity at a time when “the true Right” found itself “orphaned.”

The rallying force behind the event was the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In addition to Bolsonaro, the hundreds of attendees included defeated Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast and Argentine libertarian economist and presidential hopeful Javier Milei. Mexico was represented by clerics, former legislators from the center-right Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), and anti-abortion activists.

Former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe gave a short and lackluster address, while Senator María Fernanda Cabal, a rising star of the Colombian Right who was introduced to the audience as “the iron maiden against communism,” gave a fiery one. Ghosts from the past were present as well, such as Ramfis Domínguez-Trujillo, grandson of Dominican despot Rafael Trujillo, and Zury Ríos, current Guatemalan presidential candidate and daughter of convicted genocidaire General Efraín Ríos Montt.

U.S. political figures made appearances, most via videoconference. Propagandist Steve Bannon, Senator Ted Cruz, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Chris Landau, conservative pundit Jack Posobiec, and CPAC's leading power couple Matt and Mercedes Schlapp all boasted about the growing strength of the conservative cause across the Americas. Even Donald Trump delivered a short, rather tepid video message, which the audience nevertheless noisily applauded. Europe, too, had a small but meaningful representation. A message from Santiago Abascal, head of the Spanish party Vox, met a warm reception, while Polish anticommunist icon Lech Walesa delivered a rambling keynote address that was not nearly as combative as those of his U.S. and Latin American peers.

CPAC Mexico was an occasion for reckoning. Contrary to the optimism that followed Trump’s and Bolsonaro’s elections and the fall of Evo Morales in Bolivia, recent defeats in Chile, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Honduras, and Brazil seem to have put right-wing forces against the ropes. Yet these losses have galvanized conservatives, who, like they have in the past, are turning to internationalism to bolster their rise. Even in defeat, recent elections across the continent reveal that right-wing platforms are not only viable, but popular and capable of rallying grassroots and elite sectors, building coalitions, and gaining power in local and national arenas.

Three decades after the end of the Cold War and the consolidation of a widespread consensus supporting electoral democracy, the Old Right has sprung back as a seemingly good faith participant in the democratic game. This right wing sits at a crossroads. Given the decline of established center-right parties like Venezuela’s COPEI or Chile’s Christian Democratic Party over the past 20 years, a new constellation of hardline conservative actors is uniting internationally against new enemies like “globalism,” “gender ideology,” and “the gay lobby.”

But the roots of their grievances are decades old: their Cold War battles did not collapse with the fall of the Soviet Bloc, but rather they reconfigured in opposition to the 1990 creation of the São Paulo Forum (FSP), a continent-wide alliance of leftist and reformist parties, and with the rise of left-leaning Pink Tide governments in the early 2000s. Old tropes about communist subversion are joined today by warnings against “cultural Marxism” and its “woke,” progressive, feminist, and “politically correct” incarnations.

Fifty years before the CPAC Mexico gathering, Mexico City hosted a different mixture of fervent conservative crusaders. In 1972, the World Anti-Communist League, created in 1966 in the heat of the Vietnam War to foster a united international anticommunist front, held its first meeting outside of Asia. Thanks to its active anticommunist movement, Mexico was chosen as host. Activists welcomed over 300 committed cold warriors to Mexico City from around the world, including officials from Taiwan, Korea, South Vietnam, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Nicaragua; Cuban exiles; former fascist collaborators from Germany, Croatia, and Ukraine; Middle Eastern and African activists; and Latin American clerics and university students, among many others. For the Mexicans, it was a moment of pride and the culmination of decades of domestic and international activism, lobbying, fundraising, and proselytizing.

The WACL was the offspring of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, a 1950s effort by East Asian governments to push back against Cold War neutralism and “contain” communist China. In the 1970s, as military regimes swept across most of Latin America and initiatives emerged for interstate collaboration against communism, most of them brokered by the United States, entities such as WACL provided spaces for expanding these alliances.

A major ally of the Reagan administration, the WACL became a global platform for U.S. neoconservatives such as Senator Jesse Helms and retired Major General John K. Singlaub, as well as for powerful religious organizations including Korean religious leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. During the 1972 conference in Mexico, Latin American members founded the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL), which soon included top civilian and military figures from across the region and became a key component of the multinational state terror initiative known as Operation Condor. The CAL also fueled conflict in Central America with fighters, funding, weapons, and a well-oiled propaganda machine.

While 50 years apart, the 1972 and the 2022 summits in Mexico are kindred spirits. Yet, unlike the East Asian-dominated WACL, CPAC’s clear center is in the Western Hemisphere, specifically the United States, and it traces its origins to the U.S. “New Right” of the 1960s and the conservative response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But CPAC has become increasingly less U.S.-centric. Meetings in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Hungary, Israel, and now Mexico are evidence of the willingness of Latin American and other global allies to participate in its expanding network.

At CPAC Mexico 2022, Eduardo Bolsonaro and Verástegui repeated Jair Bolsonaro’s claim that his defeat was the product of electoral fraud—a favored right-wing tactic for discrediting elections. At the same time, conservatives rejoiced in the defeat of Chile’s progressive draft constitution in the September 2022 plebiscite, which José Antonio Kast previously deemed a victory against “the ideology and the violence of the few.” In the political world the Right inhabits, the battle has just begun and is as wide and hostile as they ever imagined it.

Right-Wing Resistance?

In recent years, the idea of “resistance” has become central to the Right’s political imagination. According to journalist and researcher Pablo Stefanoni, the Right’s success in positioning itself as the rebel victim of a globalist-progressive “establishment” allows it to compete with the Left in “being outraged about reality and propose ways to transform it.” For Stefanoni, the phenomenon is related to the fact that “the Left has stopped reading the Right, while the Right, at least the ‘alt-right,’ reads and discusses the Left.” While arguable and perhaps simplifying, this perspective has been borne out at CPAC’s Latin American summits: the Right is evidently adept at constructing an image of their leftist-progressive enemies, in picking apart and weaponizing their discourse, and in capitalizing on anti-establishment rhetoric to position their pro-life, pro-business, pro-traditional family messages in mainstream channels and among a sizable support base.

Claims about a political landscape in which globalism and nationalism have displaced left and right distinctions often ring hollow in the ears of these conservatives. Despite its different tendencies, the Right is trying to build a clear sense of unity against its enemies. On stage at CPAC Mexico, combative taunting of zurdos (lefties), progres (progressives) and la derechita cobarde (the petty cowardly Right) combined with a slew of calls to defend free enterprise, private property, the traditional family, and life from conception on. Religious slogans such as “Viva Cristo Rey” (Long Live Christ the King) and appeals to defend Christianity and religious freedom abounded. Messages about combat, battle, and struggle against “globalism”—a malleable term that often encompasses the Left, feminism, and LGBTQI+ groups—are key to the Right’s discursive arsenal.

At CPAC Mexico, a bombastic Javier Milei, self-avowed champion of libertarianism and one of the current stars of the Latin American Right, claimed: “We are superior in economic ideas and in moral values.” Cheered in typical football fashion—“Olé, olé, olé, olé, Milei, Milei”—the Argentine highlighted the persistent “cultural and political battle” after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “Cultural Marxism,” said Milei, “has carried class struggle into other spheres,” such as the “non-sensical and unnatural fight” of “man against woman” waged by radical feminists, or the “battle for the murder of the unborn.” Milei accused leftists and progressives of using “the works of Antonio Gramsci” to coopt the media and usurp the educational and cultural apparatus to impose their “violent and murderous agenda.” After extolling free market capitalism, Milei ended his speech with a cry for battle: “When you confront the socialists, don’t put your head down. Fight back … Viva la libertad, carajo!”

With its emphasis on culture as a battlefield, the conference as a whole reflected Milei’s self-righteous, combative tone. Eduardo B olsonaro alluded to regrouping for future combat and the incessant fight against communism, not as an ideology, but as a movement that changes names—socialism, progressivism—and promises equality while allegedly delivering only misery and death. He recalled how the Brazilian people precipitated the push for Dilma Rousseff ’s 2016 impeachment with mass protests in 2013. “We broke the monopoly of the Left on the streets,” he said. Eventually rallied around the figure of his father, then a member of Congress, the movement lacked party structures but had the power of “the people,” he continued. Referring to his family, he added, “We are victims of a system.” This perception of being besieged and victimized by unspeakable forces was captured by CPAC Mexico’s social media hashtag: #SomosLaResistencia (WeAreTheResistance). This idea is far from new. The South American military regimes of the 1960s-1980s and their supporters justified their coups as the only means to “resist” the Marxist onslaught. Similarly, the anticommunist Contras in Nicaragua built their international appeal on “resisting” the communist Sandinista regime. Catholic conservatism also has a long history of “resistance” against liberal, secular, and leftist forces. In Mexico, the 1926-1929 religious conflict known as the Cristero War remains a key historical point of reference for the local Right. As Catholic activist Raúl Tortolero, founder of a group called Cristero International Army, reminded the CPAC Mexico audience: “I see myself as the son of the Cristero War, but without weapons. We are cristeros, but in a different way. We defend our religion and our Western values, and we are soldiers of Christ the King.”

Because the past can be weaponized, right-wing resistance has also included a cunning and partisan use of history. Jair Bolsonaro, for instance, has openly praised Brazil’s military dictatorship, and his administration celebrated the anniversary of the 1964 coup. Chile’s Kast has also delved into these memory battles. “What Venezuela is going through today is what Chile lived between 1970 and 1973,” he said at the Latin American prelude to CPAC in December 2018, referencing the policies under socialist president Salvador Allende. Kast also defended the Chilean militar y’s 1973 overthrow of Allende as “following the people’s orders to free Chile from the yoke of Marxism.” Defiant, he continued: “They want to pass laws in Chile to jail people who say these things. Well, come and get me. If I fall, thousands will rise, because we need to rewrite history from our perspective.” Ironically, this runs counter to Kast’s own call to set aside biases and construct “a memory that belongs to all.” Memory is full of minefields, and the Right is well aware of the utility of making them explode.

The Right at Home

After Jair Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, Brazil became a potential home for the “orphaned” Right. In June 2022, São Paulo hosted CPAC Brazil, a smaller, more austere event than CPAC Mexico, but equally vociferous. Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the conference’s organizers, was joined by Kast, Milei, Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, former Trump advisor Jason Miller, as well as Brazilian legislators, academics, and think-tank personalities. It was the third CPAC event in Brazil since 2019, which, together with Eduardo Bolsonaro’s visit to CPAC 2020 in Washington DC, attests to both the strengthening ties between North and South conservatives and President Bolsonaro’s commitment to nurturing these networks as part of his foreign policy. Encapsulated in his slogan “Biblia, boi, bala” (Bible, beef, bullet), Bolsonaro’s vision for Brazil as an agricultural and industrial powerhouse free from the corrupt globalist Left set an example for other hemispheric allies.

▲ Pictured: Brazilian Minister of Women, Family, and Human Rights Cristiane Britto and her predecessor, Damares Alves, speak on stage at CPAC Brazil, June 11, 2022. Both served in the position under President Jair Bolsonaro. The the ministry has since reverted to its pre-Bolsonaro name: Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship. Other CPAC Brazil 2022 attendees included Eduardo Bolsonaro, José Antonio Kast, and Javier Milei.

Whether Bolsonaro’s success in the 2018 election and his ongoing support are a direct result of “the Trump effect” in Latin America is arguable. While Trump gave conservatives south of the Rio Grande greater confidence of northern support, Brazil’s internal conditions are also key. These included social frustration over crime and corruption, which Bolsonaro’s campaign channeled in support of a hardline platform, and the radicalization of ideological poles. Monikers like “Tropical Trump”—as if Bolsonaro, whose political career spans decades, was simply an imitator—fall far short.

Yet, it is also true that the Trumpist playbook of riling up supporters based on false claims of electoral fraud became readily available to Brazilian and other Latin American conservatives. The striking parallels between the Trumpist insurrection of January 2021 and the Bolsonarista ransacking of government buildings in January 2023 show that the hemispheric Right is not too concerned with accusations of unoriginality—and they are ready and willing to share strategies. Hence, the charge of “imitation” obfuscates the active and very effective networks of political collaboration historically built by conservatives across the hemisphere, as well as the on-the-ground conditions that make their claims and platforms believable.

▲ Pictured: Workers clean up smashed glass at Brazil's Congress following the January 8 invasion of Brasília by supporters of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, January 10, 2023.

The Latin American Right has its own traditions, needing little handholding from the United States to articulate and deploy them. This is evident with both young figures, like Argentine celebrity author Agustín Laje, a proponent of the Latin American “New Right” and its “cultural battle,” and well-established conservative stalwarts, like the late Olavo de Carvalho, a right-wing pundit who became Bolsonaro’s political guru and spread conspiracy theories about Covid-19, climate change, and the globalist “New World Order.”

Car valho’s ideas influenced Bolsonaro’s inner circles, including his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ernesto Araújo. In an uncharismatic but heartfelt speech at CPAC Brazil 2019, Araújo bashed the Left’s “totalitarian attitude,” political correctness, and gender and climate ideology. Then, insisting that conservatives are not simply defenders of the status quo, he added: “But what do we want? … The answer would be that we want to change the world.” Araújo also claimed that conservatives have an obligation to raise the banners of revolt and indignation, to defend national sovereignty, “true” human rights, “true” environmental protection, and “our faith in Christ.” He concluded: “But the banner of freedom is the most important, and it is ours.” Sitting side-stage on an armchair Eduardo Bolsonaro smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

CPAC Brazil 2019 also welcomed Bertrand of Orléans-Bragança, a supposed heir to the throne of the Brazilian Empire and a long-time member of Tradition, Family, Property (TFP), a multinational traditionalist Catholic organization founded in 1960. “His Highness” focused on Brazil’s need to defend its sovereignty. “The Amazon was never ‘the lung of the world,’” he said. “It will never be … The Amazon is ours and only ours.” He also denied any past or present-day violence against Indigenous peoples and warned against attempts to turn the Amazon into the “first victim” of a “globalizing agenda” of world government.

These claims align squarely with Bolsonarista views of history, with the extractive and pro-agribusiness development project, and with longstanding nationalist distrust of foreign forces encroaching on Brazil’s sovereignty. Like Car valho, “Dom Bertrand,” as he is known among conservatives, represents an intergenerational link with a past rich in traditionalist, monarchist, militarist, anticommunist, and anti-egalitarian ideas.

The Latin American Right must be understood in its own terms, in relation to its “homes” but without isolating it from the broader world. As historian Ben Cowan has argued, the building of conservative “moral majorities” was a transnational project. The U.S.-based “New Right,” such as the American Conservative Union and the Heritage Foundation, collaborated with and even admired their peers in the rest of the continent. This includes the TFP, Dom Bertrand’s home organization, which has been a part of this transnational conservative constellation for decades.

CPAC’s Latin American presence and the impact of Bolsonaro in galvanizing regional forces are more reflective of this shared history, and not of a one-directional process of “export” of U.S.-style culture wars in the age of Trumpism. Subordinating the Latin American Right to northern designs can result in underestimating these forces’ capacity to articulate, deploy, and implement their own intolerant and authoritarian visions.

Disarming “the Resistance”

No longer orphaned, the rising conservative movement in Latin America has found not one home, but many. While the Right is not shy to knock on the northern neighbor’s door when needed, clichéd understandings of the region as subject to the will of the United States, or as defined uniformly by Left or Right swings of the political pendulum, miss the texture of how and when wounded elite and grassroots conservatives realign, regroup, and relaunch. Although local conditions vary, conservative meetings in Mexico and Brazil show that the Right espouses an effective form of internationalism that brings together actors steadfast in their determination to seize more political spaces and garner more airtime, clicks, social media “likes,” and, most importantly, votes.

Responses from the Left are varied. In Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, social protest has been an effective tool against the authoritarian drive of right-wing governments and their apologists, while in Mexico, where the Right remains electorally weak, “conservative” has become the label AMLO uses for his critics, whether on the right or left. What seems urgent is for the Left to question a cartoonish view of their opponents as the puppets of empire, the oligarchs without popular support, or the “nazis,” even if some do espouse extremist ideas. What type of rights-based pluralistic democracy can be built in contexts in which opponents deny each other’s legitimacy and humanity? Can the Left effectively push back and neutralize the Right’s hijacking of the word “rebellion”?

Right-wing platforms and their followers claim the banners of democracy, justice, truth, and freedom while actively undermining their foundations. Today, understanding, without clichés and oversimplifications, the present configurations of conservatism, the views of the world its proponents hold, and how they intend to change it is a political necessity for anyone concerned about the future of democracy.

[aerial-jace]

The June 25th Guatemalan election and why it's kind of a Big Deal

This last Sunday Guatemala had an election, an election I can't help but have a lot of thoughts about as it's shaping up to be the culmination of a story arc of sorts of Guatemalan politics that has been running since I first became aware of politics essentially. The results, particularly in the presidential, were shocking to say the least. By writing up this post I'm hoping not only to inform those who might be curious of what's going on in my little corner of the world but also to organize my own thoughts.

More under the cut...

So, what went down with the prsidency? At first it may seem like a routine presidential election. An overabundance of candidates, 21 total, ensured no one got to the winning threshold of 1 vote above 50%, so we're going into run-offs next August 20th between the two most voted candidates. One of the candidates who advanced into the run-offs in fact is a pretty well known face, having ran twice before, ex-first lady Sandra Torres.

The party she leads is called Unidad National de la Esperanza (National Unit of Hope or UNE for its Spanish acronym), easily the most well-established Guatemalan party, with both a strong voter base and an impressive longevity considering how easy our parties crumble within a single election cycle.

Though she was a politician in her own right from before, her big break didn't come until her ex-husband and former UNE leader Álvaro Colom reached the presidency during the 2007 election. As first lady she was the face of her husband's welfare programs as well as being one of the key bureaucrats administering them. With all these accomplishments it's easy to see why she has become so beloved.

Unsurprisingly though she's also severely maligned by more conservative-minded people. All the typical right wing clichés apply to her, that she's promoting laziness, that she's vote buying, that she's encouraging the (mostly indigenous and rural) population to breed like rabbits to get welfare money, and so on and so forth.

She's also had personal scandals clouding her image, such as her divorce in 2011, right before the presidential election. Guatemalan law prohibits not only second terms but also prohibits the immediate family of current presidents from seeking to be elected. All this with the aim of preventing them from entrenching themselves or a dynastic structure into power. The timing her seemed to a lot of people quite the convenient way to skirt these laws and because of it the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (Supreme Electoral Tribunal or TSE) rejected her candidacy.

However, it would not be accurate to dismiss all critique of her as baseless propagandizing or a focus on personality over policy. UNE over the years has had a myriad controversies, involving links to drug trafficking, illegal campaign financing, misappropriation and mismanagement of government funds, and all manners of corruption which is depressingly common in the Guatemalan Congress. As consistently one of the major voting blocs and an entrenched party, UNE as a whole, and Sandra Torres as their leader, has repeatedly acted to perpetuate the political ill that hangs most heavy in the consciousness of the Guatemalan electorate.

Her two defeats, first against comedian Jimmy Morales in 2015 in what I'd call a cheap imitation of Trump's rise to power had it not happened first and the second against our current president Alejandro Giammatei, reflect precisely this deep-seated aversion towards her. The electorate voted against her more than in favor of them to catastrophic results.

That first one is particularly notable because even though he sold himself as an anti-corruption candidate, the main achievement of the Morales government was the dismantlement of the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, CICIG), a well regarded UN overseer body instrumental in exposing the corruption Morales's predecessor Otto Pérez Molina which led to his resignation and arrest.

(The Giammatei government's main policy achievement is massively fucking up the Covid response in just about every aspect.)

Now, to explain the origins of Sandra Torres and UNE's main opponent we have to zoom into that particular event. So! In 2014, as a response to a massive recently uncovered corruption case involving bribes and extortion at La Aurora Inernational Airport, Guatemala City residents began to protest at the central plaza of the city. The protestors rallied under the cry of #RenunciaYa (Resign Already) and as the modest protest movement that organized primarily through Twitter grew it became a focal point of anti-establishment sentiment rallying people of all sorts of different backgrounds.

As the CICIG investigation on the case proceeded and it became untenable for the government to let this grow, Congress voted to revoke political immunity to the president and the very next day he was arrested. He remains under custody to this very day. The very successful citizen activist campaign soon morphed into the #JusticiaYa (Justice Already) movement aiming to call out corruption and bring all politicians furthering the institutional rot of the Guatemalan government to justice.

From the leadership of #JusticiaYa would emerge Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement), a social democratic party billing itself as primarily an anti-corruption force in Congress and secondarily as a more principled alternative to the rotten UNE. The niche they fill right now is one that used to be filled by Encuentro por Guatemala (Encounter for Guatemala), an older more established party that was dissolved due to not reaching the vote threshold to remain as an active party after 2019.

The reason Encuentro lost so many voters is because many of them thought it would be a good idea to give the fresh, young Semilla candidates a chance under the assumption Encuentro would eventually absorb them. My mom did precisely that, in fact, and when the desired outcome did not materialize it left other Encuentro voters like myself feeling pretty miffed.

Semilla had intended to put forward our ex-attorney general Thelma Aldana, another key figure in the Pérez Molina downfall, as candidate in 2019 but her candidacy was rejected by the TSE and so they didn't put forward a presidential until this year with their leader Bernardo Arévalo. For his very first electoral showing they managed an impressive 11.77% compared to Sandra Torres's 15.86% and the spoilt ballots' 17.39%. With this he has well and truly established himself as the dark horse on this race.

In terms of congressmen, Semilla has also managed some fairly good numbers, positioned as the 3rd largest party with 23 out of 120 representatives, up from a measly 7 last election. They're only behind UNE's 28 and Vamos por una Guatemala Differente's (Let's go for a different Guatemala, the incumbent president's party) 38. It is not the best result they could have gotten, it will still be quite the uphill battle to get anything done if they win the presidency, specially since their main ally in Congress right now is the coalition between the indigenous issues parties Winaq and URNG-Maiz, both of which only managed 1 representative sent by their joint delegation down from 6, 3 and 3 each, in the current congress. (The party I voted for this time, I just can't win can I?) But it is at least very encouraging to Semilla voters.

Arévalo is in an interesting position as leader and presidential candidate of a social democratic party allied with two historically very leftist --outright communist in URNG's case!-- indigenous issues parties. For years the right wing line has been to demonize Sandra Torres but it seems her more centrist and socially conservative tendencies make her seem like the most pallatable option of the two at the moment. It will be hard, however, to get the right wing base to unlearn all their vitriol against her.

In economic policy Semilla seems to be much more vague than UNE, only mentioning more public spending in aspirational terms rather than concrete policies, possibly to avoid alienating voters or distracting from their main objective of bringing accountability to Guatemalan institutions. Although they are not my first choice I am very much supporting them this second round. Their alliance with Winaq and URNG-Maiz has the potential to bring more leftist positions into the mainstream. Plus they are the single openly pro-LGBT party in the running which is neat.

My biggest hope right now is that a succesful Semilla government will open up the possibility of closer collaboration with a stronger Winaq and URNG-Maiz. I'm particularly hoping Semilla, Winaq, and URNG-Maiz run a joint candidacy for mayor of Guatemala City and that it can finally topple the dominance of the Partido Unionista (Unionist Party) candidate. The Semilla-Winaq-URNG candidate this year was excellent and had the objectively correct urban planning takes.

So, yeah, that's what's been happening over here.

[chamerionwrites]

More seriously maybe it’s just me who frequently gets implicitly (or explicitly!) accused of being an anti-American traitor when I discuss politics, but I am never going to be even in the neighborhood of comfortable with people on the liberal left getting all up in their bloodlust feelings about how their opponents have committed treason and sedition. States are ideological constructs and treason is an ideological crime, which means it’s quite literally in the eye of the beholder and I don’t trust any government in the world with the power to prosecute people for it.

I mean I would hope most people agree that betraying and undermining violently oppressive regimes is admirable and right, yeah? Sure we could play endlessly circular and subjective no-true-scotsman games about whether someone was in fact being loyal to an abstract vision of what their country Should Be, but imho at that point it is both simpler and more intellectually honest to say that treason in and of itself is a morally neutral act and reach for less rhetorically loaded but more specific ways to describe why someone’s actions are wrong.

Master’s tools, master’s house, etc etc

[action]

Poder Latinx wants to answer your questions

Did you know Latinx voters make up 13% of eligible voters for the upcoming 2020 United States presidential election? That’s the largest ethnic minority voting bloc in the country! With the 2020 Presidential Election looming, we’ve partnered with Poder Latinx for an Issue Time that gives you the opportunity to ask your questions about the election.

Poder Latinx is an organization focused on building a strong political movement for immigrants and people of color to have a seat in the political decision-making process. They’re here to keep you informed and answer your questions about things that matter most in this election, like climate change, economic opportunities, and immigrant justice. So throw them a Q, and head back over here on October 13, 2020 at 12 p.m. EST to see their answers. 

Check out the answers to your questions here.

Yadira Sanchez is an advocate for Latinx civic empowerment. She recently co-founded and is serving as Co-Executive Director of Poder Latinx. In 2017, she was selected as a 40 under 40 honoree by the Leadership Center for Excellence, An Up and Coming Practitioner Finalist by the Professional Women in Advocacy Conference, and recently was selected as a 40 under 40 honoree by the American Association of Political Consultants.

Adonias Arevalo is 29 years old, a Queer DACA recipient and originally from El Salvador. He has 10 years of experience in political and advocacy strategy fighting for immigrant rights. He graduated from University of Houston with a bachelor degree in Political Science. Aside from his role in Poder Latinx, Adonias is a drag entertainer, represented Arizona at Miss Gay America in 2019 and is currently Miss Gay Copper City.

Nancy Batista is a Guatemalan immigrant who came to the U.S. at a very young age. Nancy was raised in a single-parent home. She understands the sacrifices her mother had to make as she worked three shifts in different factories to sustain the family, and uses the many hurdles she faced due to her and family’s immigration status as a motivation to keep doing her work. Aside from her role in Poder Latinx, Nancy is a member of the voter protection coalition.