Guatemala’s election result is a good sign of the health of democracy

In the elections held on Sunday, the Guatemalan voters elected Bernardo Arevalo as president with 58% of the votes. This is significant for three fundamental reasons in the context of the Guatemalan and regional political history.

 
Firstly, this clear and decisive election of an anti-establishment outsider is a victory for democracy. The current ruling establishment of President Giammattei had tried a lot of dirty tricks and prevented some candidates from contesting in the elections. They even went after the Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement) party of Arevalo with accusations of irregularities. Sandra Torres, the rival of Arevalo was favoured by the incumbent administration. This situation lead to fears that the elections might be derailed or Arevalo himself might be prevented from contesting in the second round. These concerns went beyond the borders of the country to regional and international levels. The Organization of American States and the US State Department as well as the Congress members had  issued statements. It is against this backdrop that Arevalo’s election with a convincing margin of 16% (against 37% of Sandra Torres) has given a clear message that democracy in Guatemala is safe, healthy and resilient. The elections were held peacefully without any major incidents. President Giammattei has already congratulated the winner and has invited him for talks for a smooth transition. 

More importantly, there has been no violent attacks against the electoral system or outcome as done by Trump and Bolsonaro and their thuggish followers in US and Brazil, the largest democracies in the hemisphere. 

 
Secondly, Arevalo is a centre-left progressive leader. He has promised to give priority for elimination of poverty and inequality. He proposes reforms in education and health care to make them more accessible and affordable for the poor. This is essential since a large part of the population is poor. Most of these are the indigenous people. The country has still not recovered from the 36-year civil war which ended in 1996. Several hundred thousand people were killed by the security forces of military dictatorship in the name of fighting left-wing guerillas. Criminal gangs have taken over many slums and indulge in murders, extortions and crimes. Poverty, insecurity and lack of economic opportunities are the main drivers of illegal migration of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans to to the United States. Although Sandra Torres is also left-of-centre candidate, she had started moving to the right aligning more with the ruling oligarchy. 
 
Thirdly, Arevalo’s election is a boost to the anticorruption movement.  Corruption and impunity have been the major issues after povery and insecurity. The common people accuse the elites of having a "Pact of the Corrupt".  In 2015, the Guatemalan justice had sent a sitting president Otto Perez Molina directly from the Presidential palace to jail on corruption charges, In December 2022, Molina and his Vice president President Baldetti were sentenced to 16 years in prison.
 
Arevalo has an excellent resume for the job. He has a cosmopolitan background of studies and living. He was born in Uruguay where his father and ex-president Juan Jose Arevalo lived in exile after the 1954 military coup in Guatemala. His father was the first democratically elected president of the country in 1945. His family moved later to Venezuela, Mexico and Chile. He was in Guatemala for the first time at the age of fifteen. He went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel for his graduation in sociology. His father was ambassador to Israel at that time. He got his doctorate in philosophy and social anthropology from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He became a diplomat in the Guatemalan foreign ministry and had served as ambassador in Spain. He left the diplomatic career to work with regional and international organisations.  He has written a number of books on history, politics, sociology and diplomacy. He joined a group of intellectuals to form Semilla, a think tank which became a political party. He was elected to the Congress in which he served from 2020 to 2022. When he started his presidential campaign in 2023 his polling rate was in single digit. But he succeeded in getting the second position in the first round of elections and became eligible to run in the seond round on 20 August. 
 
In foreign policy, Arevalo is pragmatic. Although he is left-of centre, he has condemned the leftist regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as authoritarian. He seeks more business with China while maintaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
 
The clean election process and the clear outcome in Guatemala should be an inspiration to other countries in Central and South America some of which also face similar political situations. Anti-establishment outside candidates would feel encouraged to take on established and entrenched political parties which control political power.
 
While Arevalo has a serious agenda for reforms of governance and socio-economic development, he does not have enough votes in the Congress to pass progressive legislations. His party has only 23 seats in the 160 member Congress. President Giammattei’s conservative party Vamos has 39 members and the UNE party of Sandra Torres has 28.
 
Sandra Torres, who has lost the presidential race for the third time, has an interesting history. She was the wife of Alvaro Colom when he was President in the period 2008-12. She manipulated and intervened in the administration to raise her profile and image. She was seen as the real power in the presidential palace. She acted like Evita of Argentina. She became head of a charity organization and got plenty of government funds to distribute to poor people, as Evita did. Sandra wanted to be seen as protector of the poor with her leftist agenda.
 
There was a constitutional obstacle to Sandra’s dream to become President after her husband. The Guatemalan constitution prohibits immediate family members of sitting president from contesting presidential elections. So what did Sandra do? She tried Magical Realism. She divorced her husband a few months before the election and proclaimed that she was “the first woman in history to divorce husband to marry the country”. Hmm..she was already divorced before marrying Colom for whom she became the third wife.
But some judges in the constitutional court had the courage to reject her claim saying that her candidature was a violation of the spirit of the constituition even if she was technically correct. After the disqualification of her candidature in 2011, Sandra waited four years and contested against the comedian Jimmy Morales in 2015. . His promise to the voters was, “I have made you laugh for so many years. I promise I will not make you cry as President.” But his government had some corruption scandals and he left the office crying. He beat her to presidency with his jokes and promise. Later Colom was arrested on corruption charges in 2018. 
 
Guatemala was the first country in Latin America to be destabilized by US in the so called war against Communism during the Cold War. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected leftist president Jacob Arbanz and installed a military dictatorship. While the coup was carried out in the name of the war on Communism, the real reason was to protect the interests of United Fruit Company which owned  hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land. The company was likely to lose some land to the land reforms initiated by Arbanz government. It had absolute monopoly in banana plantation and trade and pursued exploitative labour policies with impunity. Its revenue was bigger than that of the government of Guatemala. John Foster Dulles, the CIA chief, had close business ties with the company. When the rightist military dictatorship was resisted by the leftist political movements, the regime unleashed a wave of terror, with the support and encouragement of US. The civil war continued till 1996 in which over two hundred thousand people were killed. In March 1999, President Clinton made a formal apology for the sufferings inflicted on the people of Guatemala by the US-backed military dictatorship. But those who got US weapons to fight communism took to gangsterism and criminality after the end of the civil war. To escape this US-supported violence and crime, Guatemalans started emigrating to US, which has a moral responsibility to give asylum to the victims of its past sins.
It was in Guatemala that Che Guevara got to see first-hand the excesses of the empire and became an anti-imperial leftist guerrilla crusader. Thereafter he joined Fidel Castro and succeeded in liberating Cuba from another military dictatorship supported by US.
 
Guatemala is the largest and most important market in Central America. In 2022-23, India’s exports to Guatemala were 465 million dollars, The exports were 552 million dollars in 2021-22. This more than India's exports to some neighboring countries such as Cambodia or Kazhakstan. Motorcycles, cars, generic medicines are the leading items of India’s exports. India is the #2 supplier of medicines to Guatemala. Some Indian IT, pharma and motorcycle companies have established successful operations in the country. There is good scope for increasing India’s business with this country of 18 million people. 

  
Santa Evita – Argentine TV serial
 
The new Argentine Television serial “Santa Evita” has just been made available in India by Hot Star+ Disney. It was released on 26 July which marks the seventieth anniversary of Eva Peron’s death. She is worshipped as a Santa (saint) by her followers who call her affectionately as Evita.
 
The serial narrates the bizarre story of the corpse of Evita, wife of President Peron, who died in 1952 due to cancer at the age of 33. Her body was kept waiting for three years for the construction of a monumental memorial, which was never built. In 1955, the military overthrew Peron and hid the body for nineteen years to prevent the use of her ‘martyrdom’ as a rallying cry to overthrow the military regime. 

 
The serial is based on a novel “Santa Evita” by an Argentine writer Tomas Eloy Martinez, published in 1995. I have read this novel as well as some other books of Martinez. He has used ¨magical realism¨ to tell the story. He weaves facts and fiction in and out and one does not know what is real and what is imagined. In any case, the way Evita´s body was dealt with by her supporters and opponents is like a mystery thriller fiction. Martinez has added more mystery by his fantastic story-telling.
 
Colonel Moori Koenig from the military intelligence service is given the responsibility to hide and make the body disappear. He moves it from one hiding place to another in Buenos Aires city. But he and his colleagues involved in this macabre venture, as well as their families meet with one disaster after another. He and his accomplices, who hated the power wielded by Evita as first lady, are hypnotized by the body and become obsessed with it. Even the embalmer Dr Ara spends a lot of time alone with the body taking care of it possessively and intimately. He makes wax replicas of the body to confuse others. The Colonel discovers the embalmer’s trick and sends the original and the copies to different places for burial to mislead the Peronists who were tracking the body.
 
Here are some real-life facts which followed Evita’s death:
 
- Her body was kept for public homage for fifteen days after her death on 26 july 1952.
- The timing of evening state news broadcast was changed from 8.30 pm to 8.25 pm, the exact time when she passed into "immortality"
-Primary school children recited prayer songs from their text books, "Evita, I promise to be as good as you wish me to be "
-The military regime, which overthrew Peron in September 1955 was afraid of the subversive influence of the body. They banned the "possession of photos of Evita or Peron or use of the expressions Peronism or Peronist" and made them a punishable offence with imprisonment. 
-They sent it secretly to be buried in a cemetery in Italy. The whereabouts of the body were written and put in sealed envelope by president Aramburu who gave it to his lawyer with instructions that it should be opened only after his death. To confuse investigators, many dummy coffins were sent to Argentine embassies in other European countries to be buried.
-Monteneros, the left wing guerillas, kidnapped Aramburu in 1970, tried to get the information on Evita's body unsuccessfully and executed him. In 1974 the same group kidnapped the cadaver of Aramburu from his family's vault and demanded the return of Evita's body as ransom. Eventually, in November 1974 the body was brought back to Argentina.
-The body found its final resting place in the Recoleta cemetry in Buenos Aires. The coffin was put behind two trap doors with the only key given to Evita's sister.
Both the novel and the serial bring out vividly the politics and culture of the Argentines. Evita's real life story was inspiration for the masses. It is the story of a girl born outside marriage from a poor village family, running away to the city and trying to earn living as an actress. Her life is transformed after her chance encounter with Peron. With her organizational, oratorical and acting skills, she mobilized the masses to support and vote for Peron as president. As the first lady, she ran a foundation to help the poor people with money, housing and healthcare. There were large crowds queuing up in front of her office daily seeking her help and intervention. She empowered the Descamisados (shirtless- meaning lumpen workers) and became a champion of the poor, women and the underprivileged. She got the right to vote for women and fought for the rights of the workers. She was the first political leader to reach out to the poor, respect them and help them. She received lepers and diseased, showed affection and kissed them without batting an eyelid. This is the  reason why the masses worship her as a Santa (saint) and she has become a political legend and icon. Peronism has taken full advantage of this legacy to get the votes of the masses in the elections in the last five decades. The legacy of Evita continues to be a vital and potent political force even today. The two-time President and current vice-president of the country Cristina Fernandez Kirchner fancies herself as the inheritor of the legacy of Evita with her pro-poor policies.
 
Evita has been the most polarizing figure of Argentina for the last seven decades. She is scorned, hated and demonized by the military and the right-wing political elements and critics who use the choicest abusive words against Evita.  The oligarchic society of the country had treated the upstart Evita with contempt and condescension. The right wing accuses the Peronists of perpetuating the vote bank of the poor with populist policies which have hindered the growth of the country. The visceral hatred of Evita is brought out in a scene in the serial in which the military officers celebrate the death of Evita with champagne and the cheering words "Long live cancer".
 
It is a pity that the serial is so short with just seven episodes. There is so  much more story and legend from the life and afterlife of Evita which could be fascinating. I wish the producers consider making more episodes to bring out the rest of the drama and impact of Evita. 
 
I am delighted to see that the Argentine serial has emerged as a Latin American project with the Uruguayan Natalia Oreiro acting as Evita, Mexican actress Salma Hayek as coproducer and the Colombian Rodrigo Garcia, the son of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as one of the directors.
 
 

Shining Path’s Dark Chapter in Peruvian and Latin American history

 
Abimael Guzman, the founder and leader of the Peruvian armed revolutionary group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) which waged a violent protracted war against the state in the eighties, died in prison on 11 September at the age of 86. 

The Shining Path and Guzman had gone farther than any other groups or leaders in Latin America in taking the Leftist ideology to the extreme. Shining Path followers declared Guzman as the "Fourth Sword of Communism" (after Marx, Lenin and Mao). Their insurgency was the deadliest chapter in the history of Peru and of Latin America. 
 
In 1980, while Peru celebrated the return of democracy by voting in the country’s first elections after seventeen years of military dictatorship, Shining Path militants burned ballot boxes in Chuschi, a small town in the department of Ayacucho. On the day after Christmas of that same year, Shining Path members marked Mao’s birthday by killing street dogs in Lima and hanging them from street lamps in the colonial center. 
 
The Shining Path movement which was initially confined to academic circles in the universities, started with championing of the cause of dispossessed campesinos and indigenous people, and won the support of many across rural Peru. In the late 1970s, the movement developed into a guerilla group and pursued a campaign to demoralize and undermine the government of Peru in order to create a situation conducive to a violent coup which would put its leaders in power. In the early eighties, it focused on the countryside, but by the middle of the decade it had shifted its campaign to Lima, the center of the country’s political and economic power, with car bombs, kidnappings, and attacks on police and military installations. It took to indiscriminate violence against the state and caused death and destruction. According to the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up in 2001 to investigate the roots and consequences of the conflict, about seventy thousand Peruvians were killed or disappeared between 1980 and 2000, with nearly half of those deaths directly attributable to Shining Path, and almost a third to the Peruvian military and police.

Guzman was a student of philosophy and law in university. He wrote a thesis on “The Kantian Theory of Space and The Bourgeois Democratic State”. He was influenced by the book "Seven Essays on the Interpretation of the Peruvian Reality" by the famous Marxist intellectual of Peru Jose Carlos Mariategui. Guzman was recruited as a professor of philosophy by the rector of San Cristobal University in Ayacucho.  The rector was Dr Efrain Morote Best, an anthropologist who is said to be the true intellectual leader of the Shining Path. Encouraged by Morote, Guzmán studied Quechua, the language spoken by Peru's indigenous population. With this, heattracted  lot of students from Indigenous communities. In the 1960s, the Peruvian Communist Party had splintered over ideological and personal disputes. Guzman, who had taken a pro-Chinese rather than pro- Soviet line, emerged as the leader of the faction which became the Communist Party of Peru- Shining Path (PCP-SL) in 1969. Guzman adopted the nom de guerre Presidente or Comrade Gonzalo and began advocating a peasant-led revolution on the Maoist model. Guzman was critical of not only the US imperialism, but also Soviet imperialism, which he called as "social-imperialism". Later, he came to scorn Castro and even moderate factions in China. He visited China several times. Both of Peru’s main Communist parties expelled him. Calling himself as President Gonzalo and Comrade Gonzalo, he preached “Gonzalo Thought,” which he claimed would bring the world to a “higher stage of Marxism.”

The Shining Path guerillas attacked police stations, military camps, government offices and infrastructure such as power transmission lines. Later they escalated the war by attacking 
banks, hotels, schools, restaurants and shops. They murdered peasants, trade union leaders and others who refused to cooperate. The guerillas controlled large parts of the country which became unsafe for travel. The indiscriminate violence turned public opinion against the movement. It was at the height of this insurgency that Alberto Fujimori became president with a campaign promise to eradicate terrorism and capture Guzman who had gone underground in the mid-1970s and remained since then as a mysterious figure hiding in secret locations and later in safe houses in Lima.  Fujimori created a special counter-terrorism directorate with unlimited powers to put an end to the terrorism. Predictably, the security forces committed excesses killing innocent people besides the guerillas and their sympathizers. The security forces captured Guzman from a safe house in September 1992 and found details of the guerillas, arms and other details from his computer. Guzman was sentenced to life imprisonment and many guerillas were killed or captured. 
 

In 1993, Guzman publicly admitted defeat, advised his followers to lay down arms and called for peace. This lead to the collapse of Shining Path within a matter of months. He spent the next twenty-eight years in prison, until his death. 
 
Guzman’s first wife, Augusta La Torre, second-in-command of Shining Path, died mysteriously, in 1988. At the age of 75 years Guzman married Elena Iparraguire, who had taken La Torre’s place, both as Guzman’s partner and within the leadership hierarchy of Shining Path. Like Guzman, she had also been sentenced to life in prison for terrorism.
 
Even after his death, Guzman’s body is challenging the government. Normally the bodies of prisoners are handed over to the families. But the Peruvian government fears that his burial site might become a rallying place for radical insurgents. So the Peruvian Congress has quickly passed a law to allow the state to cremate the bodies of terrorists and those convicted of treason who die in prison.  
 
While most Peruvians are relieved that the darkest chapter of the country is over with Guzman’s death, there are still some leftists who have residual sympathies for the Shining Path. This includes the current President Pedro Castillo and his Peru Libre party. Many in Castillo’s cabinet opposed the proposal for cremation and members of Peru Libre party voted against the cremation bill. But in deference to the feelings of the majority of Peruvians, President Castillo signed the bill. Still there are a few smaller armed groups, associated with Shining Path who are operating in the country. But they do not pose any credible threat to the state and democracy of Peru.
 
In this context, one is reminded of a similar problem caused by the body of Evita Peron in Argentina following her death in 1952 to the right-wing military dictatorship. Fearing that her body and burial ceremony would rally the Peronists, the authorities hid the body in secret places and finally sent it in a coffin to be buried secretly in a cemetery in Milan. They made identical coffins and sent them to other European cities to confuse anyone trying to trace it. In 1974, the Montonero guerrilla group kidnapped from the cemetery the body of General Aramburu who lead the coup against Peron and became President in 1955-58. He was earlier abducted and killed by the Montoneros in retaliation for his execution of Peronists. The group demanded the return of Evita’s body in exchange for that of Aramburu. Finally Evita’s body was found and brought back to Argentina in 1974 after the return of Peron to power. Once Evita's body arrived in Argentina, the Montoneros gave up Aramburu's corpse and abandoned it in a street in Buenos Aires.

The death of Guzman is the end of a dark chapter not only in the history of Peru but also in the history of Latin America. In the second half of the twentieth century, the region had a large number of armed leftist groups which sought to overthrow governments to bring about Utopia. Hundreds of thousands of students, professors, intellectuals, artists, peasants, indigenous people and even catholic clergy joined the armed revolutionary groups. They were inspired by the success of the Cuban and Sandinista revolutions which overthrew rightist dictatorships and embarked on socialist path. The Colombian leftist group FARC had controlled almost half of the country’s territory at one time and was a grave threat to the Colombian state. These gave an excuse for US intervention in the region in the name of the “War on Communism” and their support to brutal rightwing military dictatorships. Thousands of leftist activists were killed, jailed, tortured and exiled. However, the Left reemerged in the late ninties and came to power in many countries of the region. Some of the former guerilla leaders contested in the elections and became presidents such as President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, President Dilma Rouseff of Brazil and President Sanchez Ceren of El Salvador.  With so many leftist governments in the region, the first decade of the twenty first century was called as the period of Pink Tide. Brazilian President Lula and Venezuelan president Chavez were in the vanguard of the New Left. But the excesses and corruption scandals of some of the Leftist governments caused a right turn in Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador. The left-baiters called it as the end of the Pink Tide and reemergence of the Right. But this was disproved by the return of Left to power in countries such as Argentina and Peru. The far-right Bolsonaro is expected to lose in the next elections in Brazil in 2022 to the leftist Lula, who is leading in the polls. Meanwhile Mexico elected the leftist Lopez Obrador as President in December 2018. He hosted a summit meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (CELAC) on Saturday 18 September. He had invited the Presidents of Cuba and Venezuela to the summit in defiance of the US policies of sanctions and isolation. 

The Latin Americans are getting used to their journey with Left and Right turns. But hopefully they will not be lead into darkness again by any more Shining Paths.

Purgatory – Argentine novel by Tomas Eloy Martinez

“Desaparecido” (disappeared) is the theme of the novel “Purgatory” by Tomas Eloy Martinez, the Argentine writer. The noun ‘desaparecido’ is an addition to Spanish vocabulary by the Argentine military dictatorship which made thousands of leftists disappear. 

In the novel “ Purgatory”, Simon Cardoso, a young cartographer and leftist sympathizer is made to disappear by the military dictatorship. This is soon after his marriage to Emilia, the protagonist in the novel. Devastated by the disappearance, she spends the rest of her life waiting for the return of her husband. She does not believe the news that he was killed, since she has not seen the body. Her oligarchic father, who makes money by collaborating with the Generals, thinks it is good riddance. Unable to have a life of her own without her love, she spends her whole life searching for her disappeared husband. She goes to Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, when she gets false tips of sightings of Simon in those countries. Finally she settles in US but continues to look out for Simon even there. She is completely obsessed with her impossible hope of return of her husband and is lost in hallucinations and delirium.  She meets another Argentine also on exile in US and tells him her story. She says to him “the most unbearable loneliness is not being able to be alone”.

 

During the military dictatorship, the soldiers went on a rampage by picking up anyone, branding them as subversives and detaining, torturing and killing with impunity. Emilia and Simon were detained when they were on a map making mission in Tucuman area for the Automobile Club of Argentina. But the illiterate and ignorant soldiers on patrol in the area did not understand the mapping work. They arrested the couple, abused and tortured them. Emilia was saved by her influential father but not Simon. 

 

When asked about the whereabouts of someone abducted by the regime, one of the dictators responded, “ ni vivo, ni muerto, simplemente desaparecido” (not alive nor dead but simply disappeared). The military picked up leftists, and anyone suspected of sympathizing with communism, jailed, tortured, killed and even thrown a few prisoners from planes. Workers disappeared from their factory gates; farmers from their fields, leaving tractors running; dead men from the graves in which they had been buried only the day before. Children disappeared from their mothers’ wombs and mothers from the children’s memories. The sick who arrived in hospital at midnight had disappeared by morning.  Truth was made to disappear by the false propaganda of the regime.

 

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo movement started a silent protest march in Buenos Aires in 1977 seeking information on their ‘disappeared’ children. The regime abducted three of the mothers and made them also ‘disappear’. Undeterred, the other courageous Mothers continued their march throughout the time of dictatorship which ended in 1983. 

 

The military regime made even the body of Evita disappear in 1955. Fearing that her body and burial ceremony would rally the leftists, the authorities sent the body in a coffin to be buried secretly in a cemetery in Milan. They made identical coffins and sent them to other European cities to confuse anyone trying to trace it. Finally Evita’s body was found and brought back to Argentina in 1974. 

 

In 1974, the Montonero guerrilla group kidnapped from the cemetery the body of General Aramburu who lead the coup against Peron and became President in 1955-58. He was earlier abducted and killed by the Montoneros in retaliation for his execution of Peronists. The group demanded the return of Evita’s body in exchange for that of Aramburu. Once Evita's body arrived in Argentina, the Montoneros gave up Aramburu's corpse and abandoned it in a street in Buenos Aires.

 

The military regime made even the names of Evita and Peron disappear from the public after the coup in 1955. Mentioning of the names in public or media was prohibited and violation was punished with imprisonment. In government files, Evita’s name was avoided and she was referred as ‘that woman’, ‘deceased’, ‘mare’ and ‘the person’.

 

Martinez has described in poignant detail the anguish and agony of Emilia who is unable to come to terms with the disappearance of her husband. This was the case with thousands of other Argentines who lost their loved ones and could not say farewell with proper burials. 

 

Martinez has written novels and articles on the disappearances, dictatorship and devastation of the Argentine society. My reviews of three of his novels in the links below:

The Peron Novel- https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2010/02/peron-novel-by-tomas-eloy-martinez.html

Santa Evita - https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2008/08/santa-evita-argentine-novel-by-tomas.html

The Tango singer- https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2009/10/tango-singer-novel-by-tomas-eloy.html

 

Purgatory is Martinez’s last novel before his death in 2010.

 

Martinez himself was a victim of the dictatorship. The newspaper for which he was working in Buenos Aires was closed down by the authorities. He was forced into exile in Venezuela where he lived from 1975 to 1983. Thereafter he moved to US. On his exile, he says, ‘No one returns from exile. What you forsake, forsakes you’. 

 

The Left is back in power again in Argentina

The Left is back in power again in Argentina

In the Argentine elections held yesterday, the Leftist Fernandez has beaten the Rightist Macri, the posterboy of Neoliberalism. 

Alberto Fernandez of the Peronist party is the new President. He is a moderate and pragmatic leftist. He believes in dialogue and negotiated solutions. Much different from his Vice President-elect Cristina Kirchner who is ideologically rigid, polarizing and confrontational. But Alberto does not have a charisma of his own and he could not have won without the support of the hardcore Peronists. So he knows the central line he has to follow carefully.

Ex-president Cristina Fernandez and now in her new avtar as Vice President will enjoy Congressional immunity from the many corruption prosecutions against her. While her charismatic Evita-like ego needs to be massaged by Alberto, she is conscious that she could not have won the election on her own. She was the culprit who ruined the economy in her second term for which Peronism was defeated in 2015.

It is not a landslide win for Peronism. Macri managed to get 40% votes as against the 48% of Fernandez. Macri’s party has won with a solid 55% votes and retained Mayorship of Buenos Aires city. Macri himself was a mayor for two terms and the city is under the administration of Macri’s party continuously since 2007.

In the Congressional elections for the Lower House, Peronists have won 120 seats as against the 119 of Macri's party. The Peronists need outside support to pass legislation since 129 votes are needed for majority in the House of 257. In the Senate Peronists have managed to get a simple majority with 37 seats out of a total of 72, while Macri's party has got 29.  The strength of the opposition in the Congress means that Peronists cannot impose their agenda. They would need the support of other parties. 

Argentina will need all the skills of Alberto to face the massive challenges of the 57 billion dollar IMF debt, high inflation, interest rates and currency depreciation, besides poverty and other basic developmental issues. It is not going to be easy. Argentina will have to go through acute pain in the coming months and the next couple of years. The internal pain will be made more acute by the Washington-Wall Street Financial mafia and the vulture funds who will try to take their pound of flesh and bleed Argentina. Fernandez would need the courage and craziness of his former boss Nestor Kirchner who restructured the debt successfully on his own with his unbelievable offer of 30 cents to a dollar. Having been involved in Kirchner’s extraordinary manoeuvers as his chief of staff in 2002, Fernandez knows very well the challenges and the tricks.

The election result is not a surprise. Macri knew what was coming in the last one year. Poverty and inflation had increased in his term and the economy was moving inexorably towards crisis. He could not stop them. But it is not his personal fault. He is sensible and reasonable. It is a systemic flaw. He followed Neoliberalism and kept full faith in the Free Market. But these have no solutions for poverty and underdevelopment. 

Macri’s fellow neoliberal President Pinera of Chile has just been taught a lesson and humbled by the protests in the last week. Pinera has sought forgiveness from those neglected by his free market policies. 

Pity, the Latin American neoliberalists have forgotten the lesson of the eighties when the Washington Consensus resulted in increase of poverty and inequality and the “Lost Decade” for the region.

The leftist coalition candidate has won the maximum number of votes in the Presidential elections in Uruguay held yesterday. It is a reward for the moderate and pragmatic policies of the Left which has been in power continuously in the last two decades.

Also in Bogota, a centre-left Claudia Lopez, who is openly  gay, got elected as mayor in the elections held yesterday.

It is important to note that Left had also made mistakes and lost power to the right in the previous elections in Brazil, Chile and Peru. Chavez and Maduro have ruined Venezuela in the name of socialism. Ortega has perverted democracy in Nicaragua. Morales has created uncertainty for Bolivia. 

Socialism is not a 100% cure either. It inhibits creation of wealth and jobs by private sector. Not only that. The Leftists need moderation and balance. They need to be flexible and have to adopt themselves to the reality in each country.

The victory of the Argentine Left is a challenge to President Bolsonaro who has Peronists in his hatred list. He had made strong statements against them during his visit to Argentina. Bolsonaro had even hinted about possible withdrawal from Mercosur, if the Peronists came to power. Alberto Fernandez greeted ex-President Lula on his birthday yesterday and mentioned that his extraordinary friend has been put in jail unjustly. He has called for the release of Lula. This is red rag to the Bolsonaro bull. Predictably, Bolsonaro has said that the Argentine voters had chosen wrongly and that he would not send congratulatory message to Alberto Fernandez. He described Fernandez's call for release of Lula as an affront to Brazilian justice system. Brazilian Foreign Minister Araujo went further and said "Argentina’s new leaders would usher in an era of “retrograde” economic policies and support for dictatorships. The indications are the worst possible … The forces of evil are celebrating,”

Fernandez had earlier called Bolsonaro as a racist, misogynist and a violent person who favours tortures. But Fernandez needs to be careful with Brazil, the most important trade partner for Argentina. Trade with Brazil is more than the combined trade with China and US. The Argentine industry and economy are deeply integrated with Brazil in the framework of Mercosur.

The election results of Argentina, Uruguay and Bogota are a moral boost for the region’s Left and especially to Presidents Maduro and Morales who remain isolated. In the next elections in Brazil and Chile, the Left has a chance to come back. Mexico has already elected the Lefist Lopez Obrador as President in 2018.

Those right wing pundits, who wrote obituaries of the Left and cheered the return of the Right, need to reexamine the new reality of Latin America which needs centrist solutions. The developing countries including Latin America need a balanced mix of pro-poor and business-friendly policies as practiced by Lula. This mix is called as Lulaism or Brasilia Consensus

Sandra Torres, the Hillary and Evita of Guatemala, defeated again in the Presidential elections

Alejandro Giammattei has been elected as the president of Guatemala in the second round of elections held on 11 August.

Giammettei’s victory is seen more as a defeat of Sandra Torres, the other candidate who lost the elections getting 42% votes as against 58% of the winner. She was perceived as the Hillary Clinton of Guatemala. Sandra was the wife of Alvaro Colom when he was President in the period 2008-12. She manipulated and intervened in the administration to raise her profile and image. She was seen as the real power in the presidential palace. Colom was arrested on corruption charges in 2018. Hatred for Sandra  made more people to vote for her opponent.  .

When her husband was president,  Sandra acted like Evita of Argentina. She became head of a charity organization and got plenty of government funds to distribute to poor people, as Evita did. Sandra wanted to be seen as protector of the poor with her leftist agenda.

But there was a constituitional obstacle to Sandra’s dream to become President after her husband. The Guatemalan constituition prohibits immediate family members of sitting president from contesting presidential elections. So what did Sandra do? She tried Magical Realism. She divorced her husband a few months before the election and proclaimed that she was “ the first woman to divorce husband to marry the country”. Hmm..she was already divorced before marrying Colom for whom she became the third wife.

But some judges in the constituitional court had the courage to reject her claim saying that her candidature was a violation of the spirit of the constituition even if she was technically correct. This reminds one of a Guatemalan joke. When a macho was accused of ‘sleeping with many women”, he objected saying that he “slept only with his wife but was awake with other women”. 

After the disqualification of her candidature in 2011, Sandra waited four years and contested against Jimmy Morales in 2015. She was beaten by the comedian Morales. She tried again in 2019 and got 25% votes as against 13% of Giammattei in the first round. But in the second round, she was defeated. 

Giammattei, a conservative, had contested the presidential elections three times earlier. He is part of the traditional Guatemalan oligarchy and military elite.

The new president who will take over in January has the reputation of a strong man. He had faced charges of extra judicial killings when he was the chief of prisons. He might now realise that it was easier to deal with the violent criminal gangs of Guatemala. In the future he has to face a more cruel and crude external white nationalist gang leader in US. Trump had forced the current Guatemalan president Morales to sign an agreement to halt the Central American asylum seekers in Guatemala pending processing of asylum claims. Morales wanted to please Trump administration since he was facing corruption accusation and other domestic challenges. But Giammattei has expressed reservations about the capacity of Guatemala to take on the larger responsibility of giving asylum to seekers from other Central American countries.

Guatemala faces many fundamental challenges such as mass poverty, corruption, crime and violence. The country suffered more during the civil war and the crack down on leftists by the right wing military dictatorship in the eighties when hundreds of thousands of people got killed. Most of the poor are the indigenous communities which form over fifty percent of the total population of  17 million.

Guatemala was the first country in Latin America to be destabilized by US in the so called war against Communism after the second world war. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected leftist president Jacobo Arbanz and installed a military dictatorship. While the coup was carried out in the name of the war on Communism, the real reason was to protect the United Fruit Company which owned  hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land. The company was likely to lose some land to the land reforms initiated by Arbanz government. It had absolute monopoly in banana plantation and trade and pursued exploitative labour policies with impunity. Its revenue was bigger than that of the government of Guatemala. John Foster Dulles, the CIA chief, had close business ties with the company. When the rightist military dictatorship was resisted by the leftist political movements, the regime unleashed a wave of terror, with the support and encouragement of US. The civil war continued till 1996 in which over two hundred thousand people were killed. In March 1999, President Clinton made a formal apology for the sufferings inflicted on the people of Guatemala by the US-backed military dictatorship. But those who got US weapons to fight communism took to gangsterism and criminality after the end of the civil war. To escape this US-supported violence and crime, Guatemalans started emigrating to US, which has a moral responsibility to give asylum to the victims of its past sins.

It was in Guatemala that Che Guevara got to see first hand the excesses of the empire and became an anti-imperial leftist guerrilla crusader. Thereafter he joined Fidel Castro and succeeded in liberating Cuba from another military dictatorship supported by US.

Guatemala is the largest country and market in Central America. It is famous for Coffee and Cardamom exports.

India’s exports to Guatemala have been increasing steadily reaching 305 million dollars in 2018-19. 

The small Guatemala has beaten the big India to become the largest exporter of Cardamom. While India has been a cardamom exporter for several hundred years, Guatemala started production after the first world war when a German coffee planter brought the Indian seeds to Guatemala. The Guatemalans export almost all their cardamom production since the local consumption is insignificant, unlike India which consumes a major part of the production.

India, the land of many political dynasties, could learn from the young Guatemalan democracy.  Article 186 of the Guatemalan constitution prohibits the President's relatives ' within four degrees of consanguinity and second degree in-laws' from contesting for Presidential post immediately after his or her term. The Indian democracy would certainly become more inclusive and better if the constitution is amended to include this article.

Guatemala shows the way to fight corruption

The people of Guatemala chose Jimmy Morales as their next President in the elections held on 25 October. They gave Morales, a former TV comedian, an overwhelming 67.44% of the votes. His opponent Sandra Torres got just 32.56%. 

The election result should be seen as a victory for the people of Guatemala in their struggle against corruption and impunity. The Guatemalans have made their voice loud and clear by choosing a political outsider and decisively rejecting the traditional political oligarchy. In fact,  this is the second victory. The people had achieved their first one in September when President Otto Perez was forced to resign and put in jail facing a trial for his involvement in the La Linea (The Line) corruption scandal. His vice president and some senior officials were imprisoned before him. The courageous and continued protests of the people for over six months from April lead to this unprecedented resignation and jailing of a sitting president.

Morales comes from a poor family unlike the previous presidents of the country who were from the oligarchy or military. Until April, when the corruption scandal surfaced, Morales had single digit ratings with no hope of win. He was trailing way behind the candidates of traditional political establishment.  The luck of Morales changed dramatically after the direct implication of President Otto Perez Molina and his vice-president. 

Although he became famous as a comedian, Morales holds University degrees in business administration as well as theology. He joined politics only in 2013 and became the secretary general of National Convergence Front, a small centre-right party. 

Sandra Torres has conceded defeat gracefully wishing the winner success in his mandate. She did not blame the loss on electoral frauds nor did she call for recount, as has happened in some countries. This is a good sign of political realism and maturity in the young democracy of Guatemala, which had suffered military dictatorship and a terrible civil war which ended in 1996.

During the 2008-11 Presidential term of her husband Alvaro Colom, she had cultivated the poor by distributing doles to them like the Argentine Evita. But the goodwill generated by this and her leftist ideology got overtaken by the disgust of the people with the corruption scandal. 

Morales will  formally assume the charge on 14 January. In his victory speech, Morales attached top priority, understandably, to combat corruption. He also needs to tackle the rampant  gang violence which has given a bad name to the country. Besides these immediate concerns, he would have to address the long term issues of poverty, health care and education especially among the native Indians who form over fifty percent of the population. He has to find new ways to raise funds for social expenditure since Guatemala has one of the lowest tax rates and revenue collection. His job is going to be challenging since his party has just 11 members in the 158 member Congress. He has not held any electoral office before and lacks administrative experience. In his campaign speeches, he had given out eccentric suggestions that the teachers should be tagged with GPS devices to monitor their attendance in schools and that every child should get a smart phone. 

What is important is that the protests of the people, the resignation of the President, imprisonment of the President and Vice president, the interim transfer of power and now the election of a political outsider have all taken place peacefully. There was no firing on protestors nor any threat of a military coup. This is especially remarkable in view of the fact that Guatemala is a country with one of the highest rates of crimes and murders.

The success of the Guatemalan people has now become a source of inspiration for other Latin Americans fighting against corruption and impunity. It has raised the hope, confidence and optimism of Latin America which is marching towards a better future.

cafe, cardamom and contrasts in Guatemala

The aroma of cafe and cardamom in the air has been filling my lungs, raising the heart beat and reigniting my passion for Latin America since my arrival in Guatemala early this week. I find the political discussions in the cafes hotter than coffee and spicier than cardamom.  The topic is the contrast between the two candidates for the second round of presidential election to be held on 25 October;  Jimmy Morales  a TV comedian and a political outsider vs Sandra Torres, a former First Lady and political insider. 

Jimmy Morales, who had played the role of a presidential candidate in one of his comedy shows, threw his hat in the ring, in the same way as every Tom, Dick and Trump join the Presidential race in US. He had no chance since the well-known political candidates from the traditional parties and oligarchies were leading in the opinion polls. His luck changed when the politicians got a bad name after the customs scandal which lead to the jailing of the President of the country just before the election. He got the maximum votes in the first round of the elections on 6 September. 

The Guatemalans can't stop laughing, recalling the old spicy jokes of Jimmy Morales.  At the same time, some don't know whether to laugh or cry when Morales seriously repeats his campaign slogan 'ni corrupto ni ladron" (not corrupt nor a thief). Some Guatemalans believe when Morales says, ' for twenty years I have made you laugh. Now I promise I won't let you cry'.

Sandra Torres, on the other hand, had acted out a real life political comedy in the 2011 elections. The Guatemalan constitution prohibits the immediate family members of the President of the country from contesting in the elections to prevent dynastic succession . But Sandra, the wife of the former President Alvaro Colom (2008-11) wanted to succeed her husband and divorced him to circumvent the constitution. She said, ' I am divorcing my husband but I am getting married to the people. I am the only woman to get divorce for her country'. The Guatemalan people, used to  manipulative politicians, thought that she might get her way, with the help of friendly judges. But the supreme court, in a strong show of  independence, disqualified her at that time. Now, of course, she is entitled to contest. 

Guatemala is one of the countries notorious for impunity. Political leaders and military officials have generally got away with corruption and human rights violations. So when the customs scandal involving  the President surfaced in April, many thought that the corrupt would go unpunished this time too. But the investigating agency showed a remarkable courage and made public proof of bribes shared by corrupt officials. The Congress acted swiftly by removing the Presidential immunity forcing him to resign. He was arrested and put in jail immediately.  This was unprecedented and historic. More on this in http://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2015/09/guatemalan-president-goes-to-jail.html#links

What is even more interesting is that the people have used peaceful protests to bring down the government in Guatemala, a country known for violence and has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The protestors had continued the agitation relentlessly and fearlessly for six months from April to September. When President Perez's supporters tried to prevent the entry of congressmen to vote in the resolution on presidential immunity, the agitators formed a human wall to let the entry of deputies into the Congress building. The success of the courageous Guatemalan people in bringing down a sitting President on corruption charges has made them as heroes for people in other Latin American countries who have been protesting against corrupt governments.

The investigation agencies and the agitating public got crucial support from the courts, the business community and the members of the Congress (including those belonging to President Perez's party) who passed a unanimous resolution withdrawing Presidential immunity. Such collective, united and unprecedented action against a powerful president is a lesson to others in power in the region.

While the contrasts mentioned above are recent, here is a permanent and historic one. Native Indians constitute around sixty percent of the population. But they have been systematically discriminated and kept outside political and economic power since the Spanish colonial days. Around eighty percent of them are poor. Over one hundred thousand Indians were killed and many were tortured and made to disappear during the bloody civil war from 1960 to 1996. The Guatemalan military and right wing death squads were responsible. But the criminal perpetrators have got away. The Indians are yet to get justice, democratic inclusion and opportunities for development. They have been inspired by Evo Morales, a native Indian President of Bolivia since 2006 and his success in emancipating and empowering the Indians. But Guatemala has not got so far any Indian leader of the calibre of Morales. Rigoberta Menchu, the Guatemalan Indian woman activist for the rights of Indians and who won Nobel Prize in 1992, contested the elections in 2007 and 2011 but with poor and discouraging results.

Guatemala has the biggest economy in Central America but the contrast between the rich and poor are glaring. Two percent of the population control over 75% of the cultivable land. The government collects one of the lowest taxes in the world and spends the least on poverty-alleviation, health care and education. However, since 2008 the government has initiated a conditional cash transfer programme called as " mi familia progresa' (my family progress) to provide financial handout to the poor. Sandra Torres ran this programme and used it to create a constituency of the poor, as was done by Evita of Argentina.

The small Guatemala has beaten the big India to become the largest producer and exporter of Cardamom. In 2014-15 Guatemala produced 30,000 tons against India's 20,000 tons. The Indian cardamom producers complain that they are being hurt by illegal import of low cost Guatemalan cardamom sometimes.  While India has been a cardamom exporter for several hundred years, Guatemala started production after the first world war when a German coffee planter brought the Indian seeds to Guatemala. The Guatemalans export almost all their cardamom production since the local consumption is insignificant, unlike India which consumes a major part of the production.

Here is something India, the land of many political dynasties, could learn from the young Guatemalan democracy.  Article 186 of the Guatemalan constitution prohibits the President's relatives ' within four degrees of consanguinity and second degree in-laws' from contesting for Presidential post. The Indian democracy would certainly become more inclusive and better if the constitution is amended to include this article.

Magic has dropped from the Magical Realism of South America

The South Americans were living in the world of magical realism for the last one year, dreaming and preparing for the world cup. In the last one month, they were talking and breathing football. They postponed meetings and projects to dates after the world cup. When all the four countries of Mercosur reached quarterfinals, there was euphoria. It was a Mercosur moment... of football power and pride. It was expected that 11 July would be a Intra-Mercosur affair.

The South Americans shopped on thursday and stocked their fridge with beer and barbecue meat. They took off from work on friday and prepared for a long weekend of football fiesta with friends and family.

On Friday morning, the Brasilians started in form with 1-0 over Holland. But after the Dutch equalised and made one more goal, the overconfident Brasilian players, who underestimated the Dutch, became nervous and lost out. The Brasilians who were watching in the big screen TV in the Copacabana beach were stunned and shocked.

This morning , the Argentines were humiliated by the Germans with a 4-0 . The Germans outsmarted and overpowered the Argentines who were running around like headless chicken. It seemed to be an unequal battle. The Argentine infantry against the supersonic Luftwaffe bombers. The Germans bombed at will and destroyed the impotent Argentine infantry.

In the afternoon, the Paraguayans fought a valiant battle against the odds and had a honourable and expected defeat. Now the Uruguyans, who won yesterday against Ghana with luck and the Hand of Suarez, are the only ones left to hold the flag in the semifinals. But their chance against Holland is not very bright. It appears that South America is out and Germany is unstoppable to win the 2010 cup.

The days of magical realism are over in South America. Today it is the day of realism without the magic. It is the realism of disbelief and disillusion... grief and gloom....anguish and agony... dejection and despair.

The Argentines have suffered the worst. They are perplexed and depressed. Even the normally talkative Maradona was lost for words and did not even attempt to give any explanation or excuse. The masses who watched in the big screens in public squares left in silence and sadness.

For Maradona, who was shouting all these days ¨ Vamos Argentina ¨ ( Argentina..Ahead ) the only option now is to sing ¨Dont cry for me Argentina ¨ as Madonna did in the movie Evita.

What is incredible is that the Argentine team had more star players than the Germans. The Argentine players are the pride of the European teams and their star performers. How could the star team let themselves be decimated so pathetically and inexplicably.

The other realism sans magic is the zero goal of Messi in the entire world cup.The best player of the world, the top scorer in Europe and the one who commanded the highest price did not get a single goal. The Argentines are at a complete loss to explain or understand this mysterious fate.

The Argentines have realised their mistaken belief in Messi as the Messiah. For those who worshipped in the Church of Maradona, today is the day of crucification.

The Argentine football stars failed to shine today. It is a dark sky over Argentina tonight. The Argentines are not going to dance Tango tonight. Instead, they will sing the sad Tango song of Carlos Gardel,

sola y triste en esta noche,
noche negra y sin estrellas.

Alone and sad this night
Dark night without stars.

Maradona… oh… Maradona

¨Maradona…oh…Maradona… with the fire in your belly and strength in your nerves .. you will come back to succeed¨. This was the Bengali song of Mokam band with which Maradona was welcomed in Kolkata in December 2008. The god-denying ideologues and men of dialectical materialism of Kolkatta made exception and worshipped and treated him as a god. Overwhelmed by the ovation, Maradona said, ¨ I thought there were no more surprises left in my life but my visit to Kolkata has changed that".

Maradona is, of course, god to some diehard Argentine fans who have set up a Church of Maradona, with its own Ten Commandments and tens of thousands of international followers. He is worshipped as D10S, which combines his shirt number ten and Dios, which means God in Spanish. The autobiography of Maradona is the Bible. Those who helped him are apostles and his adversaries are heretics. Having gone through glorification, crucification and resurrection, Maradona´s story fits the legendary requirements for a new religion!

The Argentine team is packed with more stars than any other team. But it is a Maradona team. He is not just yet another coach. El Diego is the man in the spotlight. His leaps of joy and slumps of sadness like a Tango dancer outside the touch-line is as much watched as the game of the players.

While Maradona has the feet of magic and the ¨Hand of God¨, his mouth is known for verbal shots and colourful vocabulary. He said,¨ Only Dalma and Gianina are my legitimate children. The others are children born out of money or mistake¨. About the strikers who get the ball near the goal area but fail to put it in, he says it is like dancing with a sister.

His autobiography (published in 2004) is like a canvass of his emotion and passion. The book is like the history of Argentina itself. Both the man and the country had seen memorable days of glory and forgettable times of infamy. Boom and bust… ups and downs..

His story of rise from poverty to fame is like that of Evita, the goddess of Argentine masses. At the age of ten, he was spotted by a talent scout who got him into the junior team of Argentinos Juniors. As a twelve year old ball boy, he amused spectators by showing his wizardry with the ball during the halftime intermissions of first division games. From there he rose to become one of the greatest footballers.

Maradona´s moment of glory was the 1986 world cup and his Goal of the Century. From that peak, he plunged into ignominious bottom with drugs and scandals. He was banned from playing for fifteen months. He came back and joined the world cup team in 1994 and scored a great goal against Greece. But thereafter he was sent back in disgrace after failing the dope test. Then he got into serious problems of drug addiction, became massively overweight and suffered serious health problems. After near death scare, he was admitted to a rehabilitation centre in Cuba where he recovered. He came back and reinvented himself as a TV host and in 2008 became the coach of the Argentine team.

Will this man of miraculous resurrection inspire their team to overcome the supersonic Luftwaffe of the Germans on saturday and to win the world cup on 11 July? Asking such a question is heresy in the Church of Maradona.