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Bernardo Arévalo: How Guatemala elected a progressive president [1]
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Date: 2023-10
The victory on Sunday of progressive politician Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala’s presidential runoff suggests that voters’ primary concerns are corruption and poverty – rather than conservatives’ fear-mongering about abortion and LGBTQ rights.
Arévalo, a 64-year-old sociologist who ran for the centre-left Semilla (Seed) party, secured a resounding win, with 58.01% of the vote, while his contender Sandra Torres, former first lady and leader of the UNE (Unidad Nacional por la Esperanza, National Unity for Hope) party, got 37.24%.
Arévalo’s victory marks a departure from a political scene dominated by right-leaning figures aligned with the economic elite. He is expected to be the most progressive president in the almost 40 years since the restoration of democracy.
However, Arévalo – son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president Juan José Arévalo – took a cautious approach on sensitive issues for this socially conservative country, notably sexual and reproductive rights.
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In an interview with openDemocracy last month, the now-elected president went no further than promising to apply the existing law, which renders abortion illegal unless the parent’s life is at risk, and to deploy sexual education efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies, which are particularly high among adolescents and girls. (Official figures show that 65,501 girls and young women between 15 and 19 gave birth in 2021, while another 1,805 girls aged ten to 14 became mothers.)
Arévalo also said his government would fight discrimination and hate speech against LGBTQ people, but offered no concrete proposal on policies or legal changes.
What set him apart, though, was his refusal to endorse the ‘Life and Family’ declaration, a campaign spearheaded by the ultra-conservative and influential group Family Matters (AFI) which advocates supposedly traditional family values, stringent opposition to abortion rights and equal marriage, and the appointment of like-minded individuals to executive positions.
His choice drew attention and triggered a smear campaign led by his opponent Sandra Torres, who attacked Arévalo and Semilla, accusing them of championing “pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ” ideals. Torres’ move raised eyebrows – given her past identification as a centre-leftist and her advocacy for LGBTQ rights – and eventually proved unsuccessful.
For the Maya k’iche’ anthropologist Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, a youth-dominated demographic played a pivotal role in Arévalo’s win, challenging the older, more conservative generation. Under-30s represent over 61% of the Guatemalan population. In this year's election, more than nine million people were eligible to vote. Among them, the largest population subset were those aged between 18 and 25 years, amounting to 15% of the total.
Operating under the moniker “Uncle Bernie”, Arévalo successfully tapped TikTok and Twitter to engage followers with a blend of politically charged content and relatable messaging – from discussing poverty and human rights to invoking global pop sensation Taylor Swift. This approach struck a chord with younger voters with a “broader perspective on rights compared to earlier generations,” Velásquez said.
Meanwhile, Torres had secured influential religious support – including by naming an Evangelical pastor as her vice-presidential candidate – but this failed to translate into ballots, despite the swift growth of Evangelical churches, projected to surpass Catholicism as the dominant religion in Guatemala by 2030.
“It seems that they [conservative religious voters] might have either abstained from voting or cast their ballots against this radically conservative strategy, marking a departure from their religious background,” Velásquez added.
‘Transition to democracy’ will be good enough
For 31-year-old digital designer Luis de León, who voted for Semilla, the Arévalo family is inextricably linked to the fight for democracy. “The image of [the elected president’s] father is a super strong factor when it comes to voting because of his legacy as a democratic leader,” he said.
As a voter, his primary concern is “stopping the inertia of the co-opted state that we have now. It will be good enough for me to have an executive branch that serves the people”. For him, Arévalo, aiming to be the most progressive president since the return to democracy nearly 40 years ago, will preside over a period of transition.
“Although he was cautious about topics like sexual diversity rights and abortion, I feel that is OK, because the way I see it, this is a perfect transitional government from a corrupt state to a democracy,” he added.
Since the end of the civil war in 1996, the largest economy in Central America has experienced a series of setbacks. Efforts to strengthen the rule of law and the judiciary, which materialised in 2006 with the UN-supported International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), came to an end in 2018 when then-president Jimmy Morales chose to not extend the mandate of this body that was investigating him and his family for corruption. Since then, key democratic institutions – the Judicial Power and the Prosecutor Office – have lost independence.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/guatemala-bernardo-arevalo-presidency-politics-candidates-election/
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