On a recent July morning, a dozen or so Indigenous people gather around a bonfire by the shore of Guatemala’s largest lake, Izabal.
They are holding a ceremony in the Indigenous language Q’eqchi’ before kicking off a community meeting to discuss a legal case against a major nickel mine nearby. Several people voice their frustration: after years of fighting extractive industries on their land, they had hoped for different results under Guatemala’s reformist President Bernardo Arévalo, now a year and a half into his four-year administration.
“Here, everyone supported Arévalo,” says Luis López, a Mam Indigenous lawyer. But today, many say they feel abandoned by the government.
Why We Wrote This
Guatemala’s anti-graft president rose to power with key support from Indigenous voters. Does a split in his anti-corruption party mean an erosion of that important base?
When the president’s party splintered earlier this year, as 14 of the 22 party members currently holding office moved to the newly-created Raíces party, supporters were concerned that President Arévalo’s key base was deserting him.
Mr. López says yes, he is frustrated about mining projects and the ongoing criminalization of Indigenous communities under Mr. Arévalo. But, like many other Indigenous people here, he still stands reluctantly behind the president.
Cristina Chiquin/Reuters/File
Mr. Arévalo rose to power with key support from Guatemala’s 22 Maya Indigenous groups, alongside labor unions and student movements. Promising to root out corruption, he put Guatemala’s traditional ruling class and many in the business sector on high alert after his unexpected advance to an August 2023 runoff. His candidacy prompted immediate legal maneuvers aimed at keeping him and his nascent Movimiento Semilla party out of office. They failed, but now that he is at the helm of the country, the same powerful players have moved to block his ability to govern.
Although some in Semilla say they felt blindsided by the party split, observers say it could be a pragmatic move.
“This is about the future of the party,” says Eduardo Núñez, director of the National Democratic Institute in Guatemala, a pro-democracy not-for-profit. Raíces, the splinter party, could secure the reformist movement’s participation in the 2027 presidential elections, he says, as Semilla has been suspended and reinstated, and has endured heavy pressure since 2023.
“Too much” hope?
Semilla emerged from Guatemala’s 2015 anti-corruption movement, which forced a sitting president to resign over graft charges. It evolved from an academic discussion group into a formal political party in 2018, largely composed of young, urban academics and student leaders.
They expected drastic action from their underdog president – an end to entrenched patronage networks and an overhaul of the justice system. In particularly they sought the dismissal of Guatemala’s Attorney General María Consuelo Porras Argueta, who faces US sanctions for stalling corruption probes. But Mr. Arévalo has taken a slower, more pragmatic approach, trying to work through institutional channels that many say were built to stop precisely the revolutionary work that Semilla was conceived to carry out.
The country’s historic ruling coalition’s goal isn’t “just removing Semilla,” says Fernando Solis, coordinator of Asociación Civil El Observador, a democracy watchdog. “It’s about closing the country, manipulating the law … and criminalizing the opposition.”
Fernando Chuy/ZUMA/Reuters
The country’s long-established ruling bloc aims either to weaken Mr. Arévalo to the point of paralysis or to remove him on legal grounds, Mr. Solis says. The president is under pressure from his supporters to dismiss Attorney General Porras. She has been accused of politicizing the justice system to punish opposition figures, including Indigenous people, judges, and Semilla party members. Yet Mr. Arévalo has not been able to secure congressional support to remove her.
“The Public Ministry is an autonomous institution,” Ms. Porras’s office said in a statement before the 2023 runoff election, in which they were accused of meddling. “Its actions are carried out in adherence to the principle of legality.”
Young party leaders underestimated the difficulty and slow pace of governance, and have grown disillusioned, says Hugo Maul Rivas, president of the National Center for Economic Investigations (CIEN), a Guatemalan think tank.
Some placed “too much hope” in the president’s ability to fight corruption, Mr. Maul says. But, “coming to power doesn’t mean making overnight changes,” especially without a majority in Congress.
Mr. Arévalo – son of Guatemala’s first democratically-elected president – faced obstacles even before he took office. He was inaugurated just after midnight on Jan. 15, 2024, after opposition members of Congress delayed the process by nine hours.
Semilla’s most prominent congressman, Samuel Andrés Pérez Álvarez, led the mutiny that formed Raíces. He sees the splinter party as the future of a social and political project that has become impossible under Semilla. A group of eight congressmen, led by a close ally of the president, have remained with Semilla. They say the split took them by surprise and showed disloyalty.
“I had hoped that once the government took office, these unjust and arbitrary persecutions would come to an end,” says Andrea Marcela Blanco Fuentes, a former Semilla parliamentary candidate who has been under house arrest, facing a raft of charges laid by the attorney general’s office. “But my case remains open and the political persecution continues,” she says of her recent defection to the Raíces party.
She describes the new group as “the continuation of what has been sown with the Semilla government,” and says the split is not over goals, but over differences in strategy and tactics.
“We don’t want our fight for a better country to be cut short,” says Ms. Blanco.
Raíces now has 18 months to collect sufficient signatures to legally incorporate the party and be eligible to run in the 2027 presidential race, says Mr. Núñez from the pro-democracy group.
Mr. Arévalo says Raíces “continues supporting the government.”
A disillusioned electorate
Guatemala’s indigenous communities went to bat for Mr. Arévalo when they called a national strike in early October 2023, and organized highway blockades and a three month encampment in the capital to counter repeated efforts by traditional business and political forces to block Mr. Arévalo’s election.
Many of his supporters believe Mr. Arévalo could have forced the attorney general out, with wide popular support for such a move. But the president does not want to overstep his power, Mr. Solis says.
Here in El Estor, a six-hour drive from Guatemala City, Humberto Cuc, and Indigenous leader, is frustrated by mining on his community’s lands. “We have a state that only protects the interests of extractive companies,” he says.
In 2019, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ordered the suspension of operations at the Felix nickel project after ruling that the mine and processing facility had operated illegally since 2005 due to lack of local consultation. However, a Swiss-based company operating through its Guatemalan subsidiaries is currently pressing Mr. Arévalo’s government to formally resume extraction.
Mr. Cuc, looking out over Lake Izabal, says the water has been contaminated by the mining company’s past activity. He fears that if it gets permission to resume extraction, the water source will deteriorate even further. For him, water has life – and gives him and his community life. He demands proper consultation processes – and ultimately the complete closure of the mine.
Mr. López does not have high hopes for the new Raíces party, expecting it will be more of the same. “But of course we will continue to support [the president] – most of all from a democracy perspective,” he says. “Guatemalans want the country to move forward and prosper.”
