Guatemala: Reading electoral politics from Indigenous territories

A Maya K’iche’ elder shows that she’s just voted in Santa Catarina, Sololá, Guatemala on June 25, 2023. Photo: María Guarchaj Carrillo.

Opinion • Gladys Tzul Tzul and Maria Guarchaj Carrillo • August 11, 2023 • Leer en castellano

The most recent elections in Guatemala have added fuel to the fire of a long-burning political and institutional crisis, affecting not only national affairs, but also the balance of power in territories throughout the country.

The results of the first round of elections on June 25 indicate presidential candidates Sandra Torres of the center-right Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) and self-styled social democrat Bernardo Arévalo from Movimiento Semilla will compete in a second round of elections, to be held August 20.

With less than two weeks before the second round, Guatemala’s electoral process continues to be immersed in uncertainty. After results of the first round were announced in the last days of June, a coalition of nine parties, headed by the VALOR party, which nominated Zury Ríos—daughter of Efraín Ríos Montt, who was convicted of genocide—denounced fraud before the Constitutional Court (CC) and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).

Beginning on June 26, a series of judicial actions has taken place at the CC, the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), the TSE and the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP). These institutions, in a sort of chess game, have moved their pieces to impose order in such a way that provoked a review of the tally sheets, a review of the denunciations, and the suspension of final election results.

This crisis calls into question the presidential elections, but it also impacts municipal elections. The burning of ballots, theft of ballot boxes and election related confrontations took place in at least 10 municipalities, including Santa Cruz Chinautla, San José del Golfo, San Pablo Jocopilas, San Martín Zapotitlán, San Bartolomé Jocotenango, San Pedro Yepocapa and San Miguel Petapa.

As a result, local elections will be repeated in six municipalities on August 20.

In addition, on July 12 the MP announced it was beginning a process to annul the legal status of the Semilla Movement due to allegations of falsification and money laundering. This once again put the electoral result in question, disrupting the overall correlation of forces. The Semilla party, in addition to running in the second presidential round, now constitutes the third force in Congress with 23 legislators.

The Semilla Movement is a relatively new political party, which put forward Arévalo as its presidential candidate. It represents a fraction of the upper middle class and mestizos. The party's main base is in the capital city and in several municipalities in the west and east of the country. Over the 2020-2024 period, Semilla was an opposition party in congress, with six representatives.

The fact that the Semilla Movement came second in the first round of voting was due in large part to a calculation by voters to prevent military elites from taking power. In addition, 17 percent of the total ballots cast were spoiled.

Since June, the Organization of American States has visited Guatemala to verify the elections. The August 20 contest is still in doubt due to the complaints regarding the legal status of the party.

These events locate Guatemala firmly within the broader Central American crisis, and are generating socio-political conditions similar to those of the war. As political instability expands, persecution and political violence against Indigenous communities defending their lands continues. In order to understand these two phenomena, we must look beyond the presidency and the national congress and in order to see what is taking place in different territories around the country.

How local power is linked to national power

The June 25 elections brought on a series of continuities and changes. In 83 of Guatemala's 340 municipalities, local representatives were re-elected, according to information from the TSE. In the remaining 257, some of those elected had already previously held public office as mayors. The majority of re-elected mayors are from the official party VAMOS, which won 126 municipalities, followed by Cabal with 49, UNE 43, Valor with 13, Unionista with 10 and the Civic Committees with 20. Semilla won only two municipalities.

These results can be interpreted in two ways.

The first is that municipal electoral behaviour indicates election results are determined by local knowledge, alliances and agreements made directly with candidates, and not necessarily with a particular political party.

Second, it shows how municipal alliances interact with the party in power nationally. In more than 120 municipalities, such alliances with the governing party were established.

An Indigenous woman was elected mayor in a single municipality, representing the conservative VIVA party. Women and Indigenous women lacked prominence in municipal slates and other candidacies.

In order to better understand the variety of local results, we’ll look at what too place in five different municipalities: Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, Nebaj, El Estor, San Pablo Jocopilas and Totonicapán.

In Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, Sololá, in the Boca Costa region, which is K'iche' Mayan-speaking, mothers and grandmothers were those who turned out to vote in the largest numbers.

Four political parties ran, including the ruling party. Pascual Tambriz Tzep was reelected mayor with the ruling Vamos party, followed by Cabal, UNE, Valor and the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP).

Tambriz, who has been mayor for 12 years, will now serve a fourth term, showing the consolidation of his political project. In the last election, he was elected as a representative of the UNE party.

Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán has a high rate of youth migration to the United States. Two of the young men who burned to death in a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez were originally from this municipality.

Tambriz has not guaranteed respect for the agreements made in the territorial conflict between Nahualá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán. The conflict between municipalities has claimed lives and meant that the population has had to live under a state of emergency.

In San Pablo Jocopilas, Suchitepéquez, the election results were not released, and the Electoral Council denounced aggression by citizens. According to media reports following the vote on June 25th, when three polling stations had been tallied, people came in to burn ballots.

Currently, this trilingual (K'iche'-Kakquichel-Spanish) municipality is governed by Melvin Macario of the ruling Vamos party, who was seeking re-election for a second term. The election there will be repeated on August 20, date of the second presidential round.

During Macario's administration there have been criminal lawsuits in labor matters, and he was ordered to reinstate municipal workers who were not paid for several months. San Pablo Jocopilas is also a municipality with high outward migration, from which hundreds of young people have left for the United States.

For more than three years the municipality of El Estor, Izabal has been militarized as a result of the imposition of the CGN Mining company. The Maya Q'eqchi' inhabitants have filed legal appeals and carried out peaceful demonstrations against illegal mining operations.

Election day in El Estor was characterized by a strong presence of the National Civil Police and the Army. The winner was Genaro Ico, from the VAMOS party, followed by Armando Warren from the Cabal party. For the inhabitants, Ico represents continuity with the central government, which has suspended fundamental rights in order to impose the operations of the mine by force.

In Totonicapán, in Quiché department, the elections were held under the shadow of the ongoing trial for the massacre that occurred on October 4, 2012 when six community members were killed and more than 70 were wounded.

Totonicapán is a municipality where the political density of the 48 Cantons has built its own communal political system, which is capable of disputing public order. Elections there favored the conservative Cabal party, with Luis Herrera, winning a third term, followed by Valor and BIEN.

Herrera, a non-Indigenous man, will govern in a town with a majority Indigenous population. Members of the old cacique structure of the Arévalo Barrios family, a non-Indigenous family that governed the municipality for more than 25 years, also entered the race.

It was under the rule of the Arévalo Barrios family that the October 4, 2012, massacre took place, as well as massive demonstrations against the imposition of a tax on communal lands in 2001. The Arévalo Barrios family is linked to the party founded by the late Rios Montt, who was convicted of genocide. In the June elections, a woman from this family became a departmental legislator. (To our knowledge there is no relation between the Arévalo family of Totonicapán and Bernardo Arévalo from the Semilla Party).

Political life in Santa María Nebaj has always had national influence, due both to struggles against hydroelectric dams and the genocide trial. In these elections Ramón Raymundo of UNE won, followed by Vamos and Cabal in third place. These elections interrupted the previous order of Pedro Raymundo (Cabal) and Virgilio Bernal (Vamos), who for more than 30 years have disputed elections in the municipality.

On September 1, 2022, the mayor of Santa María Nebaj illegally evicted the Indigenous Mayor's Office, further deepening tension with the communities, transportation workers, organized women and market vendors. This background shaped the June vote in many ways.

Did municipal elections provoke a change in power?

What comes through most clearly in municipal elections is the dynamic of continuity among elected officials, even when they have switched parties. The local order of power is one prism through which to see the political scaffolding within which life will be disputed in coming years.

This electoral period the Supreme Electoral Tribunal opened more polling stations, and this expansion was felt in Indigenous territories,

This meant two things: the first was the decentralization of the vote and the creation of new polling centers in the territories, and the second was that communal authorities were given more responsibilities.

"We saved the TSE thousands of quetzales because it was not able to finance the elections, and we supported them out of responsibility to the community," a community mayor in Totonicapán told a reporter from La Niña community radio in Totonicapán.

Guatemala’s elections represent a change in the balance of municipal power that will affect how communal politics operate. We are living through a moment dominated by the political crisis in Guatemala, which reveals institutional structures subsumed by extreme violence in the territories, just as in times of civil war.