The pedagogy of communal politics in Guatemala

Mayan authorities hold their staffs, which are symbols of communal authority, high during a blockade at the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala City on October 11, 2023. Photo: Jeff Abbott.

Opinion • Ojalá Editorial Collective • October 19, 2023 • Leer en castellano

A communal mobilization of national scope has brought everyday impunity and extractivism in Guatemala to a halt and revealed the vulnerability of the entire political and social structure. 

This Indigenous-communal uprising began on October 2nd, organized and sustained nationwide communal governance structures, which although negated both in legal and political terms, have brought to the fore the rejection of the impunity so keenly experienced in Guatemalan society. At its highest point, there were more than 200 blockades of highways and streets. Today there continues to be more than 20.

The blockades were called by the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán, the Indigenous Municipality of Sololá, the Indigenous Municipality of Nebaj, the Allied Communities of Chichicastenango, the Indigenous Municipality of Santa Lucía Utatlán and several others at the beginning of October. They have since set a limit to the impunity with which abuse of the republican institutions in Guatemala was being exercised.

For democracy, not party

The context for the uprising is the election of sociologist Bernardo Arévalo of the Semilla party in the second round of the general elections on August 20. This electoral choice does not directly or immediately represent the interests of the elites. Nor does it represent the popular sectors, much less that of Indigenous-communal weavings, as communal authorities have expressed time and again. But since Arévalo’s surprise advance to the run-off elections in June, a series of maneuvers in the judicial sphere and by the Public Ministry have sought to disqualify the party that won the elections and to try to block the transition of power in January. 

The straw that broke the camel's back amid all the arbitrariness and interference, which were well outside the bounds of legality, was the entry of state forces into the offices of the electoral tribunal at the end of September to seize the ballots that elected Arévalo.

Initial protests in Guatemala began in the wake of the first round of elections, but immediately following the theft of the ballots, communal authorities from Totonicapán and Sololá called for blockades and sent a delegation of Indigenous authorities and mayors to the capital. There, they set up in front of the main branch of the public prosecutor’s office in Guatemala City’s Gerona neighborhood.

Their main demand has been consistent since the beginning: the resignation of Attorney General Consuelo Porras, of Rafael Curruchiche, the head of the Special Prosecutor's Office against Impunity (FECI) and of Judge Fredy Orellana. These three are seen as the main operators of the institutional maneuvers to overturn the election results.

The messaging of communal authorities has been focused on the defense of the electoral choice of the Guatemalan people, that is, on the defense of what remains of democracy. But the issues being put to public debate are broader, and include the crisis in the provision of healthcare, the looting of the education system, corruption in the delivery of fertilizers, the theft of organic seeds, the lack of security on highways, the skyrocketing cost of living, and violence against women, among others.

The action of the mayors of the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán and the Indigenous mayors of Sololá was quickly reinforced by other communal authorities including the leaders of the Xinca Parliament, the communal structures from Huehuetenango, San Marcos, Petén, Izabal, Cobán and the departments of the south coast and the north of the country, as well as by more than 105 popular markets, including that of the Zone 4 Terminal in the capital, as well as in popular neighborhoods throughout Guatemala City. 

The communitarian organizational and political strength, with its historical structures of authority and territorial government, broke through to the country as a whole in a quiet show of force: peaceful road blockades. 

Like a spot of oil, strategic blockades spread out across roads and highways nationwide, and on the main thoroughfares of the capital. 

The political texture of Guatemala is changing

The emergence of this communal political force, which is based on a coalition of territorial communal authorities, has generated an unprecedented situation in Guatemala. 

It isn’t political parties, unions or so-called "social movements" that are providing political leadership in this mobilization. It is the Indigenous communal governments who are standing up and, with their slow rhythms, their capacity to encourage conversations, and their time-honored mechanisms of control over the visible spokespersons of the movement, giving a lesson in politics to the population as a whole.

This is not the first time that the force of communal politics has burst into public space in Guatemala, although the scope of its actions on this occasion is relevant. To intervene massively "in defense of democracy" means, above all, to prevent the continued degradation of an increasingly rigged and violent iteration of liberal politics. 

Through their actions, communal mobilizations have opened a fissure in the impunity of the current extractivist political regime in Guatemala. Through this crack, the discontent of other social sectors of Guatemala has begun to flow, in particular from poor and working class residents of the cities who live in precarious housing far from the center. 

Thousands of humble ladinos (mestizos) as well as members of Indigenous communities displaced from the countryside to the urban centers by evictions and violence recognized and heeded the call of communal authorities. They have joined the protest against republican authorities, who are those who have done the most damage to the population as a whole over the last decades. 

During the first week of blockades, thousands of people mobilized at different points, reactivating community capacities to sustain a broad, democratic movement that is changing the political texture of Guatemala.

Communal authorities, through the system of Indigenous communal governments active in the territories, are directly and in first person plural, leading a political rupture that encompasses the majority of the population at a national level. Together, they have marked a limit to impunity disguised as arbitrary legality.

Communal political pedagogy

Among the most relevant aspects of the last two weeks of blockades is the centrality of organized communal work in sustaining the mobilization on a daily basis, and the practical commitment to the continuous production of collective decision based on a constant flow of information.

Coordination by communal authorities has made possible the collection and preparation of food at different blockade points, and its distribution, whichtakes place through the participation of many volunteers. The way in which the authorities from different nations have maintained the flow of coordinated information has been very fertile, systematically informing as to what is being discussed and agreed upon. 

In the midst of ongoing, connected conversations, decisions are made and actions are organized.

This form of organization produces certainty and security in what is being done together. It is not an authority that decides vertically, but rather one that agrees and sounds out, that informs, consults and then articulates the way forward. These features of the Indigenous communal political leadership are the foundation of the broad power to convene and the political solidity that has been achieved during over two weeks of mobilization and blockades.

The horizons opening in Guatemala

It is difficult say what will happen in the following days. Well into the third week of the mobilizations, the liberal republican political structure is creaking. The President of the Republic has stated his impotence in the face of impunity and despotic actions of the Public Prosecutor's Office. He affirms that, by law, he cannot ask for the resignation of the Attorney General.

The repudiated Prosecutor Porras asked for -and obtained- the resignation of the Minister of the Interior after he refused to evict the blockades. For its part, the Constitutional Court asked the police to act to remove the thousands of demonstrators with military assistance if needed. The military command responded that they can only act upon police request. At the same time, military patrols have started to circulate through some of the communities that make up the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán, where they were detained by the community members of Paqui, Nimapá and Poxlajuj.

Perhaps the clearest indication that the situation is reaching a breaking point is the appearance of armed civilians -paramilitaries- who are violently attacking the blockades, claiming their right to continue doing business. As this article is published, one death has been reported in Malacatán, San Marcos. Armed individuals -presumed to be plantation security guards- are known to be roaming the South Coast.

In any case, it is increasingly clear that for the communal political force and for the entire mobilized population, defending democracy means establishing a limit to the militarization of the territories and to the dispossession and criminalization of community members.

There are many elements that have become visible during 18 days of blockades by Indigenous-community weavings in the territories and impoverished inhabitants of the cities of Guatemala. Of note are the plasticity of communal politics and its energetic organizational capacity.

Communal politics in Guatemala have shown a capacity to adapt to circumstances and deploy expansive power. This is the plasticity: the understanding of and ability to sustain practices of articulation capable of accommodating differences and balancing them. 

By staying true to agreements produced in a collective manner, in this case, the demand for the resignation of the three government officials, communal representatives produce simple and sensible lines of action that resonate with the majority of the population.

It is the massive organizational capacity of the network of Indigenous communal structures, which are renewed year after year through festivities, collective work for tasks in the common interest, and the regular election of authorities, that can sustain and organize the daily work needed to continue the ongoing national mobilization.